[Typo3-dev] Blogger-API-Extension (Planning)

[Ingo Schommer]

Hello!

Because I'm a lazy tt_news-poster ;), I'm planning to write a 
Blogger-api-extension for tt_news, which would allow me to post news via 
external programs.

I know the blogger-api (http://www.blogger.com/developers/api/1_docs/) 
is kinda crippled xmlrpc-wise, but it suffices for normal "weblog-work". 
I researched for alternative weblog-xml-formats, and the only 
vendor-neutral format seems to be yet in concept-phase 
(http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/RoadMap) and is probably not as 
widespread as blogger-api.

A short brainstorm for the expected features:
- minimal typoscript-configuration
- storage-id/news-id are transferred via the "blog-ID"-xmlrpc-field
- in the initial phase direct db-access, later probably with 
typo3-BE-users (and check for tt_news-permissions etc.)
- only very basic tt_news-fields supported due to 
blogger-api-limitations (excluding author, email, related, links, 
archivedate, etc.)

Some questions that occurred to me and need to be researched (maybe 
someone can provide some clues):
- Is it possible to authenticate as a normal typo3-BE-user via xmlrpc? 
are sessions needed?
- How can pictures be integrated via blogger-api? (I guess they need to 
be parsed out of the HTML-source which the software-editor generates)
- How can existing extensions aid in the process? (xmlrpc_lib, 
xmlrpc_sv_feusers, ...)
- How can PHP help me to generate the xmlrpc-requests (php5 needed? 
special xml-modules?)

Finally, some general questions and remarks on blogging with typo3:
- Could the blogger-api work for other record-based extensions as well? 
(tt_address, tt_guest, etc.) - would need some "hacking" and unclean 
solutions though...
- Any chances of integrating this extension into tt_news on a long run 
(I hate the extension-clutter that is currently going on in TER, and 
would like to see more "bigger packages" and collaborations)
- Instead of a seperate weblog-extension I would like to see a specially 
pre-configured version of tt_news (which already has RSS-feeds and 
stuff), to minimize the effort needed to set up a simple blog with typo3

I'm not very familiar with xmlrpc yet, but have some knowledge in xml, 
php and extension-programming, and I mainly do this extension for 
learning xmlrpc ;)

I also contacted the coordinators of the "Weblog project" 
(http://typo3.org/development/projects/weblog/) to avoid double work.

Any suggestions or comments?

Greets from Germany
Ingo