Blogging Roller

RSS and Atom in Action is not an open source book, but I've released the example code as open source and I'm going to be managing the code as open source project.The project is called Blogapps, because that was the original name of the book, and it's hosted at Java.Net. Currently the project distributes two packages:

Blogapps examples - This is the example code from the book plus some extras. About half the code is Java, half is C# (yes, C# code at Java.Net) and all of it is released under the Apache Software License. There is a readme for each chapter (see below) that describes how to build and run the code. The MetaWeblog API and Atom protocol examples are pre-configured to work with the Blogapps server.
 
Blogapps server - This is a blog/wiki server that includes Roller 2.3 (pre-release), JSPWiki, Tomcat and HSQLDB. Assuming you have a JDK 1.4 or later, it is extremely easy to install -- just unzip it and run the startup script, no config necessary. The server includes an Atom protocol implementation (based on APP draft #8). Installation instructions are at the bottom of the Blogapps homepage.

Just to whet your appetite, here a summary of the Java examples with links to the readme files that describe how to build and run each.

• java/readme.html - The top level README for the Java examples
• ch02 - BlogPoster : Simple XML-RPC example
• ch05 - AnyFeedParser: Newsfeed parsing examples and the AnyFeedParser
• ch07 - ROME examples: Examples to help you understand the ROME newsfeed parser
• ch08 - FileDepot: Newsfeed generation examples
• ch10 - BlogClient2: Atom protocol (APP Draft 08) examples and blog client library with Atom protocol and MetaWeblog API support
• ch11 - PlanetTool: Planet-tool aggregator
• ch12 - Tapi2opml: OPML Technorati client and OPML example
• ch13 - Cross poster: Posts all items from list of newsfeeds to a blog
• ch14 - Mail blogger: Posts items that arrive in an email inbox
• ch15 - Blog mailer: Emails digest of recent blog posts every X days
• ch16 - Ant blogger: Ant tasks for posting and uploading files to a blog
• ch17 - Blogbot: IRC chat robot that blogs on command
• ch18 - FileCaster: Simple podcast server with file-upload
• ex01 - FeedPoster: Posts digest of recent blog post (extra, not in book)
• ex02 - Grabber: Downloads posts and saves them to HTML (extra, not in book)

And here's a summary of the C# examples:

• csharp/readme.html - The top level README for the C# examples
• ch02 - BlogPoster: Simple XML-RPC example
• ch05 - AnyFeedParser: Newsfeed parsing examples and the AnyFeedParser
• ch06 - Feeds API examples: Utilities to help you explore the Windows RSS platform
• ch08 - FileDepot: Newsfeed generation examples
• ch09 - BlogClient: Blog client library and MetaWeblog API implementation
• ch13 - Cross poster: Posts all items from list of newsfeeds to a blog
• ch14 - Mail blogger: Posts items that arrive in an email inbox
• ch15 - Blog mailer: Emails digest of recent blog posts every 3 days
• ch19 - FileCatcher: Simple command line podcatcher program

So why am I telling you this? I want to encourage you to buy the book, of couse, but I'd also like to get some feedback on the examples. We're doing the final review of the book and now's the time to catch those last minute bugs. Of course, if we don't catch them it's probably no big deal -- I'll be shipping new versions of the examples and server in response to reader feedback and I'll be updating both the Atom protocol client and server code when the Atom protocol is finalized later this year.