tinyPost

tinyPost is a small utility to convert Markdown documents into HTML and post the results to Internet endpoints. For example, my blog supports AtomPub to publish new blog entries. This works well with Window Live Writer to write and post blog entries. However, I wanted to start writing blog entries in Markdown but there were no Markdown editors that would post to an AtomPub endpoint. Enter tinyPost.

Document format

tinyPost supports a few document headers to provide metadata on the post. These headers are key:value based and must be placed at the top of the document. The following is a list of valid headers:

• email - specifies the author's email address
• date - indicates a time in the future (or past) when tinyPost will send the document to the endpoint. tinyPost will skip documents whose date is set to the future.
• name - specify the name of the author.
• tags - add a comma separated list of categories to the document.
• title - the title of the document. If the title is not explicitly specified then the first line of text in the document will be used as the title.

Here is an example document that will be posted in the future with a couple tags titled, "For the future"

date: 2020-2-20T20:20
tags: future, personal

# For the future

In the future, on February 20th, 2020 at 8:20 PM to be exact, this
document will appear. If you see it one of two things is true:

1. You are in the year 2020.
2. There was a bug in tinyPost.

Either way, this is a reasonable example what is possible with
tinyPost. Keep coding, you know I am.

virtually,
   Rob Mensching

Command line

tinyPost command line support posting Markdown documents to two different endpoints:

1. AtomPub via the atom command line action.
2. Zendesk via the zendesk command line action.

Each action supports the -u command line switch to specify the user name to access the end point and the '-p command line switch to provide the password.

Atom action

The atom command line action must be provided the URI to the AtomPub endpoint. For example:

tinypost atom http://example.com/admin/atompub

Would post unauthenticated to the AtomPub endpoint at http://example.com/admin/atompub. As noted above, the -u and -p switches could be used to provide a user name/password.

Zendesk action

The zendesk command line action must be provided the sub-domain for the support desk hosted at Zendesk.com. For example:

tinypost zendesk -u robmen -p pa$$word example

Would post to the example.zendesk.com support desk using the username robmen and password pa$$word.

It is important to note that the zendesk action posts new articles to a forum named Staged. That forum must exist in the support desk before articles can be posted. It is recommended that the Staged forum be visible only to agents so that new content can be reviewed then categorized in the appropriate forum.

Also note, a post that are edited then posted again will update the existing article in the support desk without using the Staged forum.