Leniel Maccaferri's blog: Blogger Posts Searcher using Google Data .NET/Java Client APIs

It just happened today that I wanted to know if I had already published a post with a given title in one of the blogs I publish: http://jes4us.blogspot.com. During translation (I translate the posts from English to Portuguese) I had a feeling that I had already worked on a similar text… well, it turns out I was mistaken!

Instead of going through the extensive list of posts looking one by one I thought why not leverage the power of Google Data API? You may say: why not do a simple Google search instead? Good point. As I like to play with code I couldn’t resist.

So here it is. A simple and faster way of knowing if I have a post with a given title. Bellow you’ll find the codez to both the .NET client API and the Java one.

Blogger Data API for .NET
1 - Download the client library here: http://code.google.com/p/google-gdata/downloads/list

2 - Install the .msi package Google_Data_API_Setup_1.9.0.0.msi.

3 - Create a new Console project and reference the DLL Google.GData.Client that’s in this folder: C:\Google Data API SDK\Redist

using System;
using System.Linq;
using Google.GData.Client;

namespace BlogPostsSearcher
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Service bloggeService = AcquireService();

            AtomFeed feed = AcquireAndSetupFeed(bloggeService);

            // Search posts that contain the word "StringToSearchFor" in their titles
            var query = feed.Entries.Where(p => p.Title.Text.Contains("StringToSearchFor");

            // Writes the Blog's Title
            Console.WriteLine(feed.Title.Text);

            // Prints each post found...
            foreach (AtomEntry entry in query)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Post Title: {0} - Date Published: {1}", entry.Title.Text, entry.Published.ToShortDateString()));
            }

        }

        private static AtomFeed AcquireAndSetupFeed(Service service)
        {
            FeedQuery blogFeedUri = new FeedQuery("http://www.blogger.com/feeds/" + YourBlogID + "/posts/default");

            // Setting the number of posts to retrieve
            blogFeedUri.NumberToRetrieve = 1000;

            AtomFeed feed = service.Query(blogFeedUri);
            
            return feed;
        }

        private static Service AcquireService()
        {
            Service service = new Service("blogger", "YourCompanyName-BloggerPostsSearcher");

            service.Credentials = new GDataCredentials("YourEmailAddress@gmail.com", "YourPassword");

            GDataGAuthRequestFactory factory = (GDataGAuthRequestFactory)service.RequestFactory;
            
            return service;
        }
    }
}

Blogger Data API for Java
1 - Download the client library here: http://code.google.com/p/gdata-java-client/downloads/list

2 - Unzip the file http://code.google.com/p/gdata-java-client/downloads/detail?name=gdata-src.java-1.46.0.zip

3 - Create a new Java Project and add references to:
- gdata-client-1.0.jar that’s in this path: gdata/java/lib/
- google-collect-1.0-rc1 that’s in this path: gdata/java/deps/

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.List;

import com.google.gdata.client.GoogleService;
import com.google.gdata.data.Entry;
import com.google.gdata.data.Feed;
import com.google.gdata.util.AuthenticationException;
import com.google.gdata.util.ServiceException;

/**
 * @author Leniel Macaferi
 * @date 11-21-2011
 */
public class BloggerClient
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, ServiceException
    {
        try
        {
            GoogleService bloggerService = new GoogleService("blogger", "YourCompanyName-BloggerPostsSearcher");

            bloggerService.setUserCredentials("YourEmailAddress@gmail.com", "YourPassword");
            
            searchPosts(bloggerService, "YourBlogID", "StringToSearchFor");
        }
        catch (AuthenticationException e)
        {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }
    
    public static void searchPosts(GoogleService myService, String blogId, String search) throws ServiceException, IOException
    {
        // Request the feed
        URL feedUrl = new URL("http://www.blogger.com/feeds/" + blogId + "/posts/default");
            
        Feed resultFeed = myService.getFeed(feedUrl, Feed.class);

        // Setting the number of posts to retrieve...
        resultFeed.setTotalResults(1000);
        
        List<Entry> posts = resultFeed.getEntries();
        
        // Print the results
        System.out.println(resultFeed.getTitle().getPlainText());
        
        for (Entry post : posts)
        {
            if(post.getTitle().getPlainText().contains(search))
            {
                System.out.println("\t" + post.getTitle().getPlainText());
            }
        }
        
        System.out.println();
    }
}