If you’re using previous version of Ngeblog, don’t worry, you still can use all the methods as before, only now you can do more. Especially if you’re using Blogger in beta version.

As usual, i’m going to blab on a bit about this newest version, so if you can’t wait any longer to play around with it (i know some of you are like that) just go here and try it out yourself.

Ok, here are some additional features in Ngeblog 0.1 :

ClientLogin Authentication

As clearly stated in Blogger Data API documentation, now ClientLogin authentication can be used for both versions of Blogger. That surely makes our lives easier.

Unfortunately, previous version of Ngeblog still used BasicAuth for its authentication method, which is only valid for current version of Blogger, not for Blogger currently in beta . That’s why you need to download Ngeblog ver. 0.1 to be able to access Blogger in Beta version.

In implementation case, there’s nothing new in Ngeblog. You put some parameters (username and password) in constructor to connect to Blogger, like this:

<?php

  $username = "yourusername";
  $password = "yourpassword";

  $myblog = new Ngeblog($username,$password);
  $bloginfo = $myblog->getBlogInfo();
  print_r($bloginfo);

?>

Only now, Ngeblog will try to detect whether you’re trying to connect to current version of Blogger or beta version. And all authentication is done using Google ClientLogin method.

Multiple Blogs Shorthand

As i mentioned in previous post, Blogger allows you to have more than one blog per account, and each blog has its own Blog ID. Ngeblog supports multiple blogs access by defining which blog ID are you trying to access.

Thanks to Bill, now you don’t have to carry Blog ID in all methods like before, you just need to define it once in constructor, like this:

  $username = "yourusername";
  $password = "yourpassword";
  $blogid   = "81928938";

  $myblog = new Ngeblog($username,$password,$blogid);

then the rest of methods will assume you’re manipulating blog ID 81928938 without having to define it in all methods. For example to add new post, you just have to write something like this,

  $title   = "My Title";
  $content = "My content for this blog";

  $myblog->newPost($title,$content);

If you need to switch to another blog in the middle of your scripts, use setActiveBlog() method, like this:

  $anotherblogid  = "84748478";
  $anothertitle   = "My Title for another blog";
  $anothercontent = "My content for another blog";

  $myblog->setActiveBlog($anotherblogid);
  $myblog->newPost($anothertitle,$anothercontent);

Tester

Enough talks, if you still can’t understand what i’m talking about here, check out the tester here, i build it with Ngeblog 0.1. Just enter your username and password whether for current version or beta version of Blogger.

This class can be used to manipulate Blogger blogs using the GData, the Google Data API.

the book of eli the movie

You can download the newest files here. I included some example files there.

There are some dramatic changes i made for this version, including methodes naming and code beautification. Hopefully, with this new codes, it will be easy to extends it in the future.

So, if you happened to use the older version, you should make some changes too. Here are the newest howto's,

Get an entry

<?php

  require_once "Ngeblog.php";

  $myblog = new Ngeblog("yourusername","yourpassword");

  $entryid = 116086097264268587;  // entry ID you want to get
  $res = $my blog->getPost($entryid);

  echo "<pre>";
  print_r($res);
  echo "</pre>";

?>

Get list of entries

<?php

  require_once "Ngeblog.php";

  $myblog = new Ngeblog("yourusername","yourpassword");

  $res = $myblog->getPosts(1,5);  // this will get five entries from first index

  echo "<pre>";
  print_r($res);
  echo "</pre>";

?>

Post a new entry

<?php

  require_once "Ngeblog.php";

  $myblog = new Ngeblog("yourusername","yourpassword");

  $title  = "This is my title";
  $msg    = "<p>This is your <i>content</i></p>";

  if ( $myblog->newPost($title,$msg) ) {
    echo "posting success";
  } else {
    echo "posting failed";
  }

?>

Delete an entry

<?php

  require_once 'Ngeblog.php';

  $myblog = new Ngeblog("yourusername","yourpassword");

  $entryid = '116086019043835900'; // the entry id to be deleted

  if ( $myblog->deletePost($entryid) ) {
    echo "The entry with id $entryid has been deleted";
  }

?>

Update an entry

<?php

  require_once "Ngeblog.php";

  $myblog = new Ngeblog("yourusername","yourpassword");

  $entryid  = "116148936968661097"; // entry ID you want to update
  $newtitle    = "My New Title";
  $newmsg      = "<p>This is your <i>content</i></p>";

  if ( $myblog->editPost($entryid,$newtitle,$newmsg) ) {
    echo "Updating entry $entryid success";
  } else {
    echo "Updating failed";
  }

?>

There are many reasons why we need to create such web thumbnail, Cal Evans mentioned some of them,

• Graphic Designers can use it to create thumbnails of their work for archival purposes.
• You may want to create a history of a web page to show it's progress.
• Since Amazon is now charging for Alexa's thumbnail service, you may want to create thumbnails of sites you are talking about on your blog.

He also has made a nice wrapper for us, in PHP off course, made our live easier. You can try it out yourself for free, just download the source in his website here. But you're going to need API Key for that, just take some simple registration steps here, and you can use the web service to create your web thumbnail up to 250 times a month.

I know, some of you perhaps more interesting in trying it now than go to some websites to see how it really works. That's why i made this simple script just for you. Just enter the URL website you'd like to capture and your own API Key. Then again, if you're too lazy to get the API key, just use mine, here (if it failed then it might have over quote, sorry):

5b3e41f00ba60aabf3f1e81d8eec12c5

URL :

<?php

  function yatts($words)
  {
    $pspell_link = pspell_new("en");

    $aword=str_split($words);
    $length = count($aword);

    $res=array();
    for ( $sublength=3;$sublength<$length;$sublength++ )
    {
      for ( $k=1,$max=1;$k<=$length;$k++ )
        $max=$k*$max;

      for ($a=1; $a<($length+1); $a++) {
        $options[$a] = $pattern[$a] = $a;
      }

      for ($x=0; $x<$max; $x++)
      {
        $N = $x;
        for ($i=1; $i<= $length;) {
          $pattern[($length+1-$i)] = $N % $i;
          $N = $N/$i;
          $i++;
        } 

        unset($perm);
        $b = $options;

        foreach($pattern as $offset) {
          list($char) = array_splice($b, $offset, 1);
          $perm[] = $char;
        } 

        $m = array_slice($perm, 0, $sublength);   

        $jj='';
        foreach ( $m as $v )
          $jj.=$aword[$v-1];

        if ( !in_array($jj,$res) ) {
          if ( pspell_check($pspell_link,$jj) ) {
            $res[]=$jj;
          }
        }
      }
    }

    return $res;
  }

?>

All you have to do is write something like this,

<?php

  $res = yatts('ltorslt');
  echo implode(' ',$res);

?>

where “lorstl” is the letters presented in the game, and the output would be,

lot tor tot ors rot sol sot lots lost toll tors tort tots trot roll
rots slot sort tolls torts troll trots rolls trolls stroll

Yep, grab one and make scores.

Notes:

• To make this script works you need to compile PHP with pspell support. Read the manual for that.
• You also need to install Aspell program and its english dictionary, get it here.
• For windows user, you’re going to need dos2unix program for windows. Somehow, some Aspell binary files can not be read because it’s in DOS format. Just type this in your DOS-prompt,
  
  download fair game full lenght

  C:\Program Files\Aspell\data> dos2unix iso8859-1.dat
C:\Program Files\Aspell\data> dos2unix standard.kbd

What is Blogger GData API? This is what the guidelines said,

The Blogger data API allows client applications to view and update Blogger content in the form of Google data API (“GData”) feeds. Your client application can use GData to create new blog posts, edit or delete existing posts, and query for posts that match particular criteria.

I will show you how to do that with PHP, using curl and simpleXML functions. So, make sure you have them installed in your PHP.

Authentication

You should know that at the time of this writing there are two versions of Blogger: the current version, in which users have Blogger-specific accounts, and the new version that’s in beta, in which users use their non-Blogger-specific Google accounts. This Google account is also used for other Google Service like Google Groups, Google Base and etc.

This tutorial assumes that you use current versions of Blogger, means that we don’t need Google account to authenticate our requests. So we only need HTTP basic authentication to make any request to server.

Getting BlogID

First off, we’re going to need blogID to make some requests to Blogger server. I cann’t find in the guidelines how to do that directly. So this is how to work around that.

According to the guidelines, you can get a feed listing the blogs for a particular user by sending an authenticated GET request to the following URL,

http://www.blogger.com/feeds/default/blogs

The metafeed response would be something like this,

<entry>
  <id>http://www.blogger.com/feeds/userID/blogs/blogID</id>
  <published>2006-08-02T07:55:26.191-08:00</published>
  <updated>2006-08-02T07:55:52.309-08:00</updated>

  <title type='text'>My Diary</title>
  <summary type='html'>Being the journal of Elizabeth Bennet</summary>
  <link rel='alternate' type='text/html'
    href='http://liz.blogspot.com/index.html'>
  </link>
  <link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed'
    type='application/atom+xml'
    href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/blogID/posts/full'>
  </link>
  <link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#post'
    type='application/atom+xml'
    href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/blogID/posts/full'>
  </link>
  <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml'
    href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/userID/blogs/blogID>
  </link>
  <author>
    <name>Elizabeth Bennet</name>
    <email>liz@gmail.com</email>
  </author>
</entry>

Since we’re only interested in getting blogID, the first <id> .. </id> tag is our main concern. This is how we do this in PHP,

    function getBlogID($username,$password)
    {
      $ch = curl_init("http://www.blogger.com/feeds/default/blogs");
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_GET,1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "{$username}:{$password}");
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER,0);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH,CURLAUTH_BASIC);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION,CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
      $xmlstr = curl_exec($ch);
      $http_code = curl_getinfo($ch,CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

      if ( $http_code == '200' )
      {
        $xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlstr);
        $_entryid = explode("/",$xml->entry->id);
        return $_entryid[count($_entryid)-1];
      }
      else
      {
        return "Unable to connect to server";
      }
    }

    echo getBlogID('myusername','mypassword');

Change myusername and mypassword into your own username and password for Blogger. We will use this blogID for other requests like add, edit, view or delete post.

Posting a blog

You can post a new blog by sending the POST request to the appropriate Blogger URL,

POST http://www.blogger.com/feeds/blogID/posts/full

with the POST field defined in the following format,

<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
  <title type='text'>This is my title</title>
  <content type='xhtml'>
    <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
      <p>This is my <em>content</em>, you can put HTML format here.</p>
    </div>
  </content>
</entry>

Here is the code for doing that in PHP,

    function postBlog($username,$password,$title,$msg)
    {
      $blogID = getBlogID($username,$password);

      $xmlstr = "
<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
  <title type='text'>$title</title>
  <content type='xhtml'>
      $msg
  </content>
</entry>
      ";

      $ch = curl_init("http://www.blogger.com/feeds/$blogID/posts/full");
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "{$username}:{$password}");
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-type: application/atom+xml"));
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER,1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH,CURLAUTH_BASIC);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION,CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$xmlstr);

      curl_exec($ch);
      $http_code = curl_getinfo($ch,CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
      if ( $http_code == '201' ) {
        echo "Post success";
      } else {
        echo "Post failed";
      }
    }

    postBlog("myusername","mypassword","This is my title","<p>This is my <em>content</em>, you can put HTML format here.</p>");

Send a query

GData lets you request a set of entries that match specified criteria, such as requesting blog posts created or updated in a given date range, or requesting blog posts containing a specified string. For more information about the query parameters for GData queries (such as updated-min and updated-max), see the Google Data APIs Protocol document.

For example, to get the blog listing from the first index up to two entries, you can send GET request to the following URL,

GET http://www.blogger.com/feeds/blogID/posts/full?start-index=1&max-results=2

the response to this request might look like this,

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/'>
  <id>http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full</id>
  <updated>2006-10-12T23:04:11.220-07:00</updated>
  <title type='text'>My Blog</title>
  <link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://myblog.blogspot.com'></link>
  <link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full'></link>
  <link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#post' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full'></link>
  <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full?start-index=1'></link>
  <author>
    <name>Mr. Author</name>
  </author>
  <generator version='6.00' uri='www.blogger.com'>Blogger</generator>
  <openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex>
  <openSearch:itemsPerPage>2</openSearch:itemsPerPage>
  <entry>
    <id>http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full/116075233967881293</id>
    <published>2006-10-13T08:12:19.663-07:00</published>
    <updated>2006-10-13T08:12:19.730-07:00</updated>
    <title type='text'>What a good thing</title>
    <content type='xhtml'>
      <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
        <p>This is my post</p>
      </div>
    </content>
    <link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://myblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-good-thing.html'></link>
    <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full/116075233967881293'></link>
    <link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full/116075233967881293'></link>
    <author><name>Mr. Author</name></author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full/116075233967881294</id>
    <published>2006-10-13T08:12:19.663-07:00</published>
    <updated>2006-10-13T08:12:19.730-07:00</updated>
    <title type='text'>Really nice thing</title>
    <content type='xhtml'>
      <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
        <p>This is my nextpost</p>
      </div>
    </content>
    <link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://myblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/really-nice-thing.html'></link>
    <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full/116075233967881294'></link>
    <link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/83989983/posts/full/116075233967881294'></link>
    <author><name>Mr. Author</name></author>
  </entry>
</feed>

Here is how you can do it in PHP,

    function sendQuery($username,$password,$start,$maxresults)
    {
      $blogID = getBlogID($username,$password);

      $ch = curl_init("http://www.blogger.com/feeds/$blogID/posts/full?start-index=$start&max-results=$maxresults");
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_GET,1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER,0);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH,CURLAUTH_BASIC);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION,CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
      $xmlstr = curl_exec($ch);

      $http_code = curl_getinfo($ch,CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
      if ( $http_code == '200' )
      {
        $resp = simplexml_load_string($xmlstr);
        return $resp;
      }
      else
      {
        echo "Failed to send query.";
        return false;
      }
    }

    if ( $resp = sendQuery("myusername","mypassword",1,2) )
    {
      foreach ($resp->entry as $ent ) {
        echo "<a href=\"{$ent->link[0][href]}\">{$ent->title}</a>","<br />";
        echo $ent->content->div->asXML() , "<br />";
      }
    }

You can find more type of query in GData protocol guidelines, including how to edit and delete entry. Perhaps on the next tutorial i will teach you how to do it. Till then, have a nice try.

Cute isn’t it?