Command Line Blogging Client

This script allows you to edit/post entries on a blog via XML-RPC calls. For more information about this script, visit:

• GitHub repo
• Scott Yang's original site

REQUIREMENTS

mtsend.py requires Python. The master branch requires Python 3.0 or higher. The python-2.7 branch has most fixes and new features backported and can run in Python 2.7.x. The python-2.4 branch contains Scott Yang's original version 1.1 and should work in versions of Python from 2.4 to 2.6.x (and perhaps older versions of Python 2.x), but doesn't contain the improvements of the master and python-2.7 branches (mostly because I don't want to install ancient versions of Python to test them; as of writing, Python 2.7.x is the most used version of Python, and older versions are dwindling).

CONFIGURATION FILE

Configuration file for mtsend.py is in the style of Windows INI files, which consist of sections and key/value pairs. There are 3 main sections - global, site and blog. The configuration file should be read-only.

Global Section: There is only one key/value in this section, and it is used to note the default blog alias to use if it is not provided on the command line. For example:

    [global]
    default=example

It shows the default blog alias will be 'example'

Site Section: You can have multiple site sections for each blog installation you have access to. The section name will be [site-"site name"]. For example:

    [site-test]
    url=http://testdomain.com/xmlrpc.php
    username=foo
    password=bar
    encoding=UTF-8

It defines site "test" with the URL to your site's XML-RPC script, and the username/password used to access that site. "encoding" is optional, and defaults to UTF-8.

Blog Section: You can have multiple blog sections for each blog you have on the sites you have access to. Blogs are distinguished by their 'alias', which you can select in the command line using -a. The section name for this blog will be [blog-"blog alias"]. For example,

    [blog-example]
    site=test
    blogid=3

Each blog section must have "site", which indicates the site this blog belongs to, so that mtsend would be able to locate site-related information from the configuration file. It also needs the blog ID on that site. To find out all the blog IDs, you can use -B "site name" to print out the list.

POST FORMAT

When editing or posting via mtsend, the post needs to be in a specific format. The format is very close to Movable Type's import/export format.

It consists of a header and body. For example:

header1: value1
header2: value2
header3: value3
-----
BODY:
....
-----
EXTENDED BODY:
....
-----
EXCERPT:
....

Extended body and excerpt are optional in a post. Most header elements are optional when you are creating a new post. If they do not provide a value, then the default value configured by your blog will be used.

These are the header keys/values:

Key	Value	Description
TITLE		The title of this post.
ALLOW COMMENTS	0/1	Whether this post allows comments.
ALLOW PINGS	0/1	Whether this post allows trackback pings.
PRIMARY CATEGORY		The primary category of this post.
CATEGORY		The category associated with this post entry. You can have multiple CATEGORY keys in the header. The first CATEGORY key automatically becomes the primary category, if the PRIMARY CATEGORY key is not specified.
CONVERT BREAKS	0/1/customized text filter name	Whether the line break will be automatically converted into <br/> and <p/> when posted. It can also be the name of an installed text filter. To get the list of installed text filters, use mtsend.py -T.
DATE	dd/mm/yyyy HH:MM:SS [AM|PM]	The post date. It might not work if you are creating a new post.
KEYWORDS		The keywords of your post.
PING		The URL to be pinged during posting. You can have multiple PING keys in the header.

COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

Invoke python3 -- mtsend.py to see a list of arguments.

HISTORY

1.2 - TBD

• Started my own fork (keithbowes@github)
• Ported to Python 3
• Support for the XDG directory layout
• Fixed proxy support
• Added new functionality:
  • Listing posts
  • Deleting posts
  • Adding comments
  • Deleting comments
  • Seeing the true post status

1.1 - 19 Nov 2005

• Add SSL support for proxy.

1.0 - 20 May 2005

• time module related fix for Python 2.4.
• Ensure all cells passed to print_table() function are in string-type.

0.6.1 - 6 Apr 2004

• Properly handles mt_allow_comments for MT2.6 servers.

0.6 - 1 Apr 2004

• Add build-in support for HTTP proxy server, which is detected via environment variable HTTP_PROXY.
• Alternative encoding for XML-RPC packets.

0.5 - 14 Oct 2003

• Remove the support of MT2.5. Use the older version of mtsend.py if you need these supports.
• Support KEYWORDS and PING into the header.
• Add new functionalities provided by MT2.6's backend.
  • List out trackback pings of a post.
  • List out text filters installed.
• Documentation in the source code.

0.4 - 10 Mar 2003

• Support the new metaWeblog.newMediaObject() function via mtsend.py -U filename, i.e. you can now upload text/binary files to your MovableType site via mtsend.py!
• Use mt.getRecentPostTitles() function in MT2.6 to save bandwidth.
• Some bug fixes due to some inconsistency between MT2.6 and MT2.5.

0.3 - 3 Jan 2003

• Make it to work on Python 2.1. "xmlrpclib" needs to be downloaded separately. It is tested on Python 2.1.2 for Windows.

0.2 - 30 Dec 2002

• Fixed a bug in saving the post entry back, where new line characters are stripped.

0.1 - 30 Dec 2002

• Initial public version