I finally got around to building a MetaWeblog API Handler for this site, so I can
use Windows Live Writer. It certainly was an interesting task. I wrote
code for XML, SQL Server, File IO, and Authentication to get this thing working.
It’s kinda mind-boggling how many different pieces were necessary to get the Handler
to function properly.
All-in-all the development was really fun. Most people would give up on the
process once they realize what’s required to debug such an interface. But it
got my chops in shape. It’s not every day you have to use a Network Listener
to debug code. It’s certainly not something I would want to do everyday, but
every so often it’s pretty fun.
While in the preparation process, there were a couple of procedures that I thought
might be tricky to work out. One in particular was automatically uploading images
to my server that were placed in the post. I could have left it to the manual
process, what I started out with, which involved FTP’ing the images to the server,
and then figuring out the URL for them, and manually inserting the img tag.
Or, I could let Live Writer and the Handler do all the work. Ironically, this
procedure took the least amount of code out of all of them:
public string NewMediaObject(string blogId, string userName, string password,
string base64Bits, string name) { string mediaDirectory
= HttpContext.Current.Request.PhysicalApplicationPath + "media/blog/"; if (authUser(userName,
password)) { File.WriteAllBytes(mediaDirectory + name, Convert.FromBase64String(base64Bits));
return Config.SiteURL + "/media/blog/" + name; } else { throw new Exception("Cannot
Authenticate User"); } }
Now its a breeze to write posts. It even adds drop shadows to images:
Live Writer also automatically creates a thumbnail of the image, and links to the
original. It might be a pain in some cases, but it’s easily fixable.
All I need now is more topics that involve pictures. Kitten’s optional. :)
