New version of the RadioAtomBridge tool - v3.2!

Tonight I posted the lastest version (v3.2) of my RadioAtomBridge tool for Radio Userland . This tool is a way to mirror blog posts from Radio Userland to blogs that are hosted at Blogger.com. The tool has been working great over the last year, but recently Blogger.com changed their API (wisely!) to require the use of SSL. I discovered this when my tool failed and stopped working.

I spent the last several weeks making a number of changes, and cleaning up the tool in general. There were several fixes that I wanted to get in place, and I think that I have covered the majority of them. The primary change was to allow you to specify using SSL/TLS for the ATOM posts. This does require a download from Userland of the Radio Userland TLS module ... but it's a free download.

I've done a good bit of testing, and have actually posted this article with the tool. I believe that I have things working well enough to release a build as v3.2 ... so go and grab a copy and give it a try! If you have problems, please post comments on the RadioAtomBridge blog ... I'll look for them there!

[tags: radio userland blogger blogspot atom]

Installing the RadioAtomBridge Tool v3.2

The Radio Userland Atom Bridge Tool is designed to allow anyone using Radio Userland an easy way to mirror posts to any Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog, using the Atom API. This tool is based on prior work from other developers - Dave Winer and Steve Hooker - who wrote the ManilaBloggerBridge and xManilaBloggerBridge respectively.

The installation is straight forward and should require very little effort overall. There are a few key points to understand about how this tool operates:

• Blogger.com has recently started to use SSL for all ATOM API access. With v3.2 of the RadioAtomBridge tool, you will have to download and install the Radio Userland TLS module. Make sure to download and install this before proceeding!
  
• Once it is installed, you will configure the tool using the Radio Userland Tools link on the Home Page.
• The tool will not mirror posts from your blog home page to Blogger ... only posts to categories are mirrored. This is on purpose so that you can selectively post to your Blogger blog by using categories. If you want a post to go to your home page, and to a Blogger blog, then simply create a category and always check both your home page and that category when posting.
• This tool ought to work with any other Atom API compliant server. Give it a try, if it fails then come back here and comment or complain. If you provide enough information I'll see if I can take a look at it and get it working.

Ok ... so how to get started. First, make sure to go and get the Radio Userland TLS module and install it. Second, go and download the RadioAtomBridge Tool. Once you have it downloaded, copy it into the Radio UserlandTools folder on your computer. On Windows systems, this is usually the Program FilesRadio UserlandTools. I'm not real sure where this folder is on a Mac. When you copy the tool into this directory, give it a minute or so and the tool will be installed.

Next, you'll want to go to the Radio Userland Home Page, and then click the Tools menu. You ought to see a new tool called the RadioAtomBridge. Make sure that the checkbox to the left of the name is checked. If it is not, then check the box to enable the tool and Submit the page. If the tool is enabled then the name RadioAtomBridge will be a highlighted link ... click it.

You will now be presented with the configuration page. You will see each category and a checkbox where you can enable that category to be mirrored. The first three configuration fields are already configured for Blogger.com, so you only need to update the Blog ID, your Blogger username, and password.

To get your Blogger Blog ID, go to Blogger.com and log in. On the Dashboard, click on the name of the blog that you want to configure in Radio. If you now look at the URL in the address bar of your browser you will see a URL like: http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=99999999

... your Blog ID is the number at the end . Your Blogger username and password ought to be obvious.

Lastly ... do not check the box about Manila sites. I'm probably going to remove this option as it is an older feature of the ManilaBloggerBridge.

Once you have entered all of these settings, Submit the page and your changes will be recorded ... and you'll be ready to start posting. Go back to your home page ... write a post ... check the category that you configured. After you have posted, go to the Radio Userland Events page and look for the indication that the post to Blogger occurred. You can also go back to the RadioAtomBridge page and scroll down to your category. There should now be some statistics about the post, and possibly an error message if there are problems.

I have now been using this tool for a number of months, and I am currently mirroring five different categories to five different blogger.com weblogs. I'm very happy with how this tool is now working ... I hope that someone else finds this valuable!

[tags: radio userland blogger blogspot atom]

Fixes to the RadioAtomBridge tool for Radio

As of tonight, I have fixed two more issues with the RadioAtomBridge tool.

Last night I was able to get SSL/TLS working to post to Blogger.com ... since they have now started to enforce requiring this. I also fixed the links on the events page so that they will now take you to your Atom feed for the appropriate blog.

Tonight I thought I would do a couple of other tweaks. First, I added a quick fix that will include the date and time as a title if you do not specify one. Blogger requires a title on every post. Second, I did a fix to the prefs page for RadioAtomBridge to account for category names that might have a '.' in them. The way the code had been written it failed on my categories where I used a domain name for a category.

I also spent some time learning how the prefs page works, and now I think that I am going to add a new option for SSL/TLS enabled disabled to keep the tool working with any potential Atom site. It's going to take some time for that fix.

I'm still pushing to get v3.2 out the door in the next few days. This prefs page fix is the last one that I want to address for now.

One thing that it fun is that I am still learning more and more about Usertalk, and the underlying architecture of Radio and tools. Not sure its useful in the long run, however its fun to experiment with! :-)

RadioAtomBridge update coming

I really have put off working on my RadioAtomBridge for a while now. It worked for me, and that's what counts ... right? :-)

Well, over the last week, it stopped working for me ... and I was frustrated. I haven't seen any comments on the blog about it, and so I figured that it was probably ok, but the more that I looked into the problem it appears that there were two issues:

1. It appears that Blogger/Google have lived up to their promise of requiring SSL/TLS to secure the ATOM posting. This really does make sense, and I'm not against ... I just didn't want to have to edit code again. But I have, and I am now testing this new version that I worked on last night. If all goes well, I'll post a new version for people in the next day or so. Oh and another note ... this is slowly becoming the Radio Blogger Bridge again since I am slowly hardcoding some things to work with Blogger, and removing some options. I might see how easy it is to add an option for SSL/non-SSL ... but don't count on it.
   
2. I also found that Blogger will not allow you to create a post that does not include a "title". So if you post, and the title is empty, it causes a java:Null Pointer Exception on their server. Wonderful. I haven't yet fixed this, but am looking at what I might do ... maybe force a default title of the time and date?

Anyhow ... it was fun to get into Radio again ... and it was also a pain. I hate that I have not yet found a fully supported blogging tool that really does what I want it to do. But I am working on it!

Keep your eyes on the Radio Atom Bridge blog for update news!

Updated RadioAtomBridge v3.1

There have been a number of reported bugs in the Radio-Atom Bridge Tool that I have fixed as of last night ... and so I have posted the RadioAtomBridge Tool v3.1 which fixes two core bugs.

1. There was a dependency on another tool which I have removed for now. This call simply added some enhanced formatting of posts, and I can probably reincorporate this in the future if you have that tool installed, but for now I simply removed the call to that function.
2. There also was a bug in the editing of a post. This has also been fixed ... with one caveat. In the original ManilaBloggerBridge Tool there is a limit that you can only edit your post on the day that you created it. I'm not sure why this is, but I did not want to make too many changes at once ... so this limit is still in place.

There are still a couple of issues that I want to resolve, however I am sticking to testing the core functionality for right now!

Configuring Radio Userland to mirror posts to Blogger.com

The Radio Userland Atom Bridge Tool is designed to allow anyone using Radio Userland an easy way to mirror posts to any Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog, using the Atom API. This tool is based on prior work from other developers - Dave Winer and Steve Hooker - who wrote the ManilaBloggerBridge and xManilaBloggerBridge respectively.

The installation is straight forward and should require very little effort overall. There are a few key points to understand about how this tool operates:

• Once it is installed, you will configure the tool using the Radio Userland Tools link on the Home Page.
• The tool will not mirror posts from your blog home page to Blogger ... only posts to categories are mirrored. This is on purpose so that you can selectively post to your Blogger blog by using categories. If you want a post to go to your home page, and to a Blogger blog, then simply create a category and always check both your home page and that category when posting.
• This tool ought to work with any other Atom API compliant server. Give it a try, if it fails then come back here and comment or complain. If you provide enough information I'll see if I can take a look at it and get it working.

Ok ... so how to get started. First, go and download the RadioAtomBridge Tool. Once you have it downloaded, copy it into the Radio UserlandTools folder on your computer. On Windows systems, this is usually the Program FilesRadio UserlandTools. I'm not real sure where this folder is on a Mac. When you copy the tool into this directory, give it a minute or so and the tool will be installed.

Next, you'll want to go to the Radio Userland Home Page, and then click the Tools menu. You ought to see a new tool called the RadioAtomBridge. Make sure that the checkbox to the left of the name is checked. If it is not, then check the box to enable the tool and Submit the page. If the tool is enabled then the name RadioAtomBridge will be a highlighted link ... click it.

You will now be presented with the configuration page. You will see each category and a checkbox where you can enable that category to be mirrored. The first three configuration fields are already configured for Blogger.com, so you only need to update the Blog ID, your Blogger username, and password.

To get your Blogger Blog ID, go to Blogger.com and log in. On the Dashboard, click on the name of the blog that you want to configure in Radio. If you now look at the URL in the address bar of your browser you will see a URL like: http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=99999999

... your Blog ID is the number at the end . Your Blogger username and password ought to be obvious.

Lastly ... do not check the box about Manila sites. I'm probably going to remove this option as it is an older feature of the ManilaBloggerBridge.

Once you have entered all of these settings, Submit the page and your changes will be recorded ... and you'll be ready to start posting. Go back to your home page ... write a post ... check the category that you configured. After you have posted, go to the Radio Userland Events page and look for the indication that the post to Blogger occurred. You can also go back to the RadioAtomBridge page and scroll down to your category. There should now be some statistics about the post, and possibly an error message if there are problems.

So far it works for me ... I'm going to keep testing and might have some updates. Good luck and I hope that someone finds this valuable!

The RadioAtomBridge Tool

I have been a long time user of Radio Userland ... one of the first, powerful blogging applications around. One of the coolest things about Radio was that is is also a development platform, and is able to be customized and modified by anyone. I quickly learned how to hack my way around inside of Radio using the Usertalk language ... yet another scripting language.

With all of this I quickly began to customize and enhance the blogging capabilities. I have made numerous hacks to the aggregator and to the blogging engine.

A while back I realized that I really wanted to use Radio to be able to post to some of my blogs that are hosted at Blogger.com and Blogspot.com. I found some tools that other people had written - specifically the ManilaBloggerBridge written by Dave Winer, and then the xManilaBloggerBridge written by Steve Hooker.

I had two requirements:

1. I wanted to have my posts mirrored to Blogger.com or Blogspot.com
2. I wanted to do this on a category by category basis

I was able to hack on the xManilaBloggerBridge code and get it working, however I ran into a third "wish" ... the support of post Titles. It turns out that the Blogger API (which these older tools used) did not support passing in a Title with a post.

When I found that Google/Blogger.com was now fully supporting access via the Atom API I realized that it was time to create a new version of these tools, updated to use the new API ... which supports Titles.

So this is it ... the new and improved RadioAtomBridge Tool ... a derivative of the xManilaBloggerBridge Tool which was a derivative of the ManilaBloggerBridge Tool. I'm giving all of this code to Userland to incorporate this into a future version of Radio ... and I'll also maintain a copy of this here for as long as it makes sense.

If you have questions, feel free to e-mail ... I'll get back to you as soon as possible!