Older blog entries for oubiwann (starting at number 4)

Here are some quick notes on accessing Advogato from twisted's xmlrpc:

>>> from twisted.web import xmlrpc
>>> from twisted.trial.util import deferredResult
>>> user = 'oubiwann'
>>> pass = 'xxxxxx'
>>> x = xmlrpc.Proxy("http://www.advogato.org/XMLRPC")
>>> deferred = x.callRemote('diary.len', user)
>>> count = deferredResult(deferred)
>>> for i in range(0,count):
...   deferred = x.callRemote('diary.get', user, i)
...   html = deferredResult(deferred)
...   print html

And this will print out the contents of the diary entries.

To make a a new diary entry, just do this:

>>> deferred = x.callRemote('authenticate', user, pass)
>>> cookie = deferredResult(deferred)
>>> deferred = x.callRemote('diary.set', cookie, -1, 'This is a test entry via XML-RPC')
>>> status = deferredResult(deferred)

As Titus Brown was kind enough to inform, it turns out that Advogato has an XML-RPC interface. You can read about it here: http://www.advogato.org/xmlrpc.html. Thus, no need for mechanize (thank goodness... that would be been like swatting a fly with an engine block).

I still want to be able to make posts to my diary via email, so I will adopt my old MT/yarn-based script to Advogato's XML-RPC. Nightly exports could be done with either XML-RPC or with urllib... we shall see.

Titus also mentioned that he had more to say on the matter, and an update would be forth coming... I look forward to that :-)

Well, now that it worked, I'm off and running. This will be the new ElectricDuncan weblog... perhaps I will do something with the old weblog data I still have, maybe some stuff from Google's cache, and I think I have some saved drafts somewhere on my laptop. When there's something setup for the archives and that data, I'll provide a link.

At any rate, this is a fresh start ;-) And the code to weave this into a powerful blogging system will be small and easy to write. I've got all kinds of ideas, including using something like a combination of yarn and mechanize to automatically post entries to Advogato. If anyone's interested in using this like I am, just let me know, and I'll give a link to the code. And, of course, I see a place for the most wonderful cElementTree here as well ;-)

Well, I've been thinking about the diary from Advogato as a new place to blog. The primary motivation at this point is simplicity. I've thought about reinstalling MT and trying to get back some of my old posts, integrating a blog with the Zope/Plone-based corp extranet for AdytumSolutions, using blogger.com, etc. But none of these things are really cutting the mustard. I can't even begin to tell you how much I lost with my blog. Completely disheartening. I want to continue blogging, but I don't want to spend all the effort I had to do before... and I don't want to use someone's feature-rich system that does a billion more things than I need. As far as Advogato is concerned, the things holding me back are the following:

* export/backups of diary entries
* the ability to title entries
* categorization of diary entires

That's not too bad, really... because here's what I'm thinking: every night I will run a script that pulls down the "Recent diary entries" RSS feed, eliminate overlap/redundancies, and save. Not only that, but I can build my own viewable archive in any system that lets me process XML data. So, I think I am convincing myself that I can make this work...

As for the titling and cateorization of things, I will have to think about... possibly HTML attributes, if Advogato doesn't strip those out; I'll have to test. Hm... I wonder how/if that would be preserved in the RSS feed? Looks like it's time to do some testing! I see possible adapations of Abe Fetig's yarn software here, kind of like what I did when writing that script to process emails as blog entries...

In the preview, the HTML attributes were preserved... let's see what this looks like after I post.

Well, one of my servers took a nose dive and it was the one that hosted my weblog. So, I've been exploring other options, and this may be one of them... it's been ages since I used advogato; perhaps it's time to get reacquainted :-)