The Weblog APIs in a single JSP
I should be in bed, but I'm still awake messing around with weblog tech. I've been meaning to get around to implementing the Blogger, MetaWeblog, and MoveableType XML-RPC APIs for a while now (think: 2 years) but I just never bothered. Well, that's not true, I'd take a look at it, wonder what the hell a struct was in Java and move on. But now that I'm trying to meet all the criteria on this Blog Feature List both personally and professionally, I figured I'd better sit down for a moment and work it out.
XML-RPC, as most people have pointed out before, isn't particularly hard to get working. The problem is that what is affectionately called the Weblog APIs by some are actually several different groups of methods spread between their respective websites. Though MoveableType does have a nice summary, you still have to go track down and grok the original sources. Then, if you want to get this stuff running in Java, you have to contend with the horrendous samples that most Java programmers out there have created. I grabbed Blojsom, Roller and Pebble's implementations and was completely astounded by their complexity. Simon's is the clearest - and was a great starting point for me, but still. Why do Java programmers have to make this stuff so damn hard?!?!
So here's a single JSP page with an empty framework which supports of all three Weblog APIs.
A snippet: