Answering to both Eric and Laura:
thanks for your suggestions and comments. Here is my answer. Nothing personal, of course, just an attempt to explain better what I am trying to do, why, and why your proposals (with one exception) are not applicable in my case.
Laura wrote
There are a number of import modules available.... I'm assuming the developers list pointed you to the api documentation.
I did not try the developers list because I contacted _directly_ the authors of several modules, including those already mentioned, and some drupal users posting messages like mine. Since this did NOT get any effect, I am pretty sure asking the developers -list_ won't change anything, but I might try...
If you want a desktop solution, you might start with something like Performancing or even ecto.
But this is not what I call desktop "solutions". The Performancing plugin, Ecto (which btw I can't run natively on Linux), all the other stand-alone clients like bloGtK or, for that matter, the web interface of drupal or any other CMS around are just PATCHES, HACKS from this point of view. More exactly, they're stuff which *is* essential, but not a solution to serious, continuous use, or posting long texts. I don't want to use this kind of programs.
I'll soon have a 21" inches monitor. There already are real, full screen word processors and HTML editors, with spell checking, macros and lots of other goodies. It's combining these two things that makes me much more productive, not a faster CPU.
I refuse to not use these *real* programs full-screen, in favour of some crippled text editor, or to paste _manually_, every time, what I just wrote in a real word processor in a box slightly bigger than a cell phone display. I am looking for a script solution so I can then connect it to a macro inside a word processor, or a local cron job. Without ever looking to any "blogging client" or web interface.
Enough ranting. Some practical comments:
Laura wrote:
The reason this is not just a matter of inserting content into a table is because Drupal uses more than one table to manage the site.
I was aware of this, but was hoping to find some Python or Perl modules already doing the low level work of knowing such tables and updating them.
Eric wrote:
Have a look at the mailhandler.module, which allows creation of content from email. This is probably the closest thing to what you're after, and could probably be modified to create content from the
<filesystem.
I had already looked at mailhandler. I was trying to not use it because adding another server (IMAP) or modifying the configuration of the existing one looked "dirty" and prone to security holes (extra accounts, etc...). As I said, I'd rather upload stuff via ssh than email. But you're probably right, if mailhandler can be hacked to run on the local file system it _could_ be a solution.
Thanks, O.
dondi_2006 wrote:
I refuse to not use these *real* programs full-screen, in favour of some crippled text editor, or to paste _manually_, every time, what I just wrote in a real word processor in a box slightly bigger than a cell phone display. I am looking for a script solution so I can then connect it to a macro inside a word processor, or a local cron job. Without ever looking to any "blogging client" or web interface.
You may want to try the mozex extension for firefox, it allows you to use an external programm to write and edit what goes into a html textfield.
Enough ranting. Some practical comments:
Laura wrote:
The reason this is not just a matter of inserting content into a table is because Drupal uses more than one table to manage the site.
I was aware of this, but was hoping to find some Python or Perl modules already doing the low level work of knowing such tables and updating them.
Eric wrote:
Have a look at the mailhandler.module, which allows creation of content from email. This is probably the closest thing to what you're after, and could probably be modified to create content from the
<filesystem.
I had already looked at mailhandler. I was trying to not use it because adding another server (IMAP) or modifying the configuration of the existing one looked "dirty" and prone to security holes (extra accounts, etc...). As I said, I'd rather upload stuff via ssh than email. But you're probably right, if mailhandler can be hacked to run on the local file system it _could_ be a solution.
mailhandler can read from the local filesystem, but the input has to be in mbox format.
Cheers, Gerhard
On 7/3/06, dondi_2006 dondi_2006@libero.it wrote:
If you want a desktop solution, you might start with something like Performancing or even ecto.
But this is not what I call desktop "solutions". The Performancing plugin, Ecto (which btw I can't run natively on Linux), all the other stand-alone clients like bloGtK or, for that matter, the web interface of drupal or any other CMS around are just PATCHES, HACKS from this point of view. More exactly, they're stuff which *is* essential, but not a solution to serious, continuous use, or posting long texts. I don't want to use this kind of programs.
Nobody has exactly what you are looking for because your request is very specific. There are many other modules which do similar things for other purposes (import/export is one I can think of) but probably none of them do exactly what you need. It's not a common way for people to interact with a Drupal site, so there are no standard and already created modules to do it.
I think that the suggestions for "look at this module" or "try that extension" were meant to show you a base of code that does similar things so that you can modify it to exactly suit your own situation. If you simply try to use these modules and extensions and software you will certainly be disappointed with how they fit your situation.
I refuse to not use these *real* programs full-screen, in favour of some crippled text editor, or to paste _manually_, every time, what I just wrote in a real word processor in a box slightly bigger than a cell phone display. I am looking for a script solution so I can then connect it to a macro inside a word processor, or a local cron job. Without ever looking to any "blogging client" or web interface.
This is a reasonable use case, though not a common one. The rich client side XUL administrator summer of code project (I believe) gets closer to what you are looking to find. I suggest you look into it and perhaps help to shape it: http://drupal.org/node/60507 http://groups.drupal.org/soc-xul-based-drupal-manager
In fact, I just tried the demo that is available for that and it is looking GREAT!
However, don't be surprised if you have to roll your own using some of the suggested modules/software as an example. Drupal sites are generally used for community content where it is created by many people. In that case, it makes more sense to use an in-browser WYSIWYG editor and to _theme_ the site to have a larger input box than to use some client side script to upload individual files.
Regards, Greg
what you really seem to want is not some on-server script but an XMLRPC script that uses blogapi (.module)
I managed to post content to a sandbox Drupal with some hacked up Ruby script, using the very simple-to-use XMLRPC libraries: http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/xmlrpc/rdoc/index.html
Talking to your Drupal site is very simple with that library. and I am certain there is something like this for PHP (or any other language you like).
Bèr
Bit of a side topic, maybe ... but do you know if the blogapi module has the ability to populate a custom CCK node, for example, or does it just handle a simple title and body type of node?
Ray
On Jul 4, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Bèr Kessels wrote:
what you really seem to want is not some on-server script but an XMLRPC script that uses blogapi (.module)
I managed to post content to a sandbox Drupal with some hacked up Ruby script, using the very simple-to-use XMLRPC libraries: http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/xmlrpc/rdoc/index.html
Talking to your Drupal site is very simple with that library. and I am certain there is something like this for PHP (or any other language you like).
Bèr
[ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
Op dinsdag 4 juli 2006 16:51, schreef Ray Zimmerman:
Bit of a side topic, maybe ... but do you know if the blogapi module has the ability to populate a custom CCK node, for example, or does it just handle a simple title and body type of node?
Blogapi provides hooks, so you could write a module that presents the proper fields to xmlrpc (who will tell your XMLRPC 'client' about it).
So: No, currently only body/title nodes are supported. But it is really not a lot of work to make it CCK friendly.
http://api.lullabot.com/api/HEAD/function/hook_xmlrpc
Sidenote: Did you look at the sympal_script drupal-includer I talked about? I am curious how simple it is to make commandline tools Drupal-friendly.
Bèr