Continuous Learning

Blogger API is one of the earliest Blogging API’s, and it has been around for a long time. Currently Blogger is moving to ATOM, so if you just click on the Blogger API link, it’s going to take you to a blog. Google broke its own links, basically.

So where is the actual Blogger API documentations nowadays? I forgot how I found it, but it’s here:

• http://www.blogger.com/developers/api/1_docs/

And the first thing you will see when going to the link is the highlighted warning that says:

Note: This API will be deprecated soon; please use the Atom API instead. - Eric, 4/2006

The nice thing is that we are learning about WP’s API, so unless WP decides to follow suit, we don’t have to worry about the warning

Limitations

The reason for its obsolescence is because the API is limited - it can only post content; not title, categories, and other things that you have come to expect from a blogging platform. I don’t know why the API is this limited, but perhaps once upon a time that was all people need. This is no longer true today (and hence WP’s support for MetaWeblog & MovableType API).

Regardless of its limitations, because of its early status and influence on upcoming API’s, it is still important to know. And hopefully Blogger does not decide to take down these pages soon (they probably break the link because they want to obsolete the API, but that makes it difficult for others trying to figure out WP)

API

Below are the methods supported in Blogger API:

• blogger.newPost: Makes a new post to a designated blog. Optionally, will publish the blog after making the post.
• blogger.editPost: Edits a given post. Optionally, will publish the blog after making the edit.
• blogger.getUsersBlogs: Returns information on all the blogs a given user is a member of.
• blogger.getUserInfo: Authenticates a user and returns basic user info (name, email, userid, etc.).
• blogger.getTemplate: Returns the main or archive index template of a given blog.
• blogger.setTemplate: Edits the main or archive index template of a given blog.

From WP perspective, the necessary methods are Blogger.getUsersBlogs & Blogger.getUserInfo (possibly getTemplate & setTemplate as well, but I’ve not had uses for it). For the posting capabilities we need to look at MetaWeblog & MovableType, which we will discuss in the next article.