Subject: Exporting a blog using Atom

From: Andrew da Silva <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:15:11 -0400

Hi guys and gals,

Would you recommend using Atom to export other things than entries,  
comments or logs?

I was hoping to use Atom to export blog options, users/groups,  
permissions, tags, etc...

Of course, I want the document to be valid Atom.

While talking with Geoffrey Sneddon, he suggested using several Atom  
documents, makes sense.

Here's an example of a table structure we use:

name - string
type - integer
value - string

The goal is to be able to fully export a blog either to migrate,  
upgrade or backup...

Thanks!

Andrew da Silva

---

From: "Brian Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 12:28:26 -0500

Andrew da Silva wrote:
> Would you recommend using Atom to export other things than 
> entries, comments or logs?
> 
> I was hoping to use Atom to export blog options, 
> users/groups, permissions, tags, etc...

I am building weblogging software that stores everything in AtomPub
collections--comments, entries, settings, pictures, attachments, templates,
etc. So, it is definitely possible for backup/restore purposes for a given
software package. For import/export between different software packages,
blogging packages *should* (IMO) be able to import/export entries and
comments as Atom feeds but many don't do a good job doing it. Besides
entries and comments, Atom is less useful because there are not standards
for encoding settings, and many settings applicable for package A (e.g.
WordPress) are not applicable to package B (e.g. Moveable Type). 

Regards,
Brian

---

From: Aristotle Pagaltzis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 23:09:56 +0200

> entries, comments or logs?

Depends on how far you want to go. I see no reason to do it;
neither do I see any reason not to. The only good argument in
favour that I can think of is that you could export the entire
weblog to a single file, but then you also have images and other
binary files, and then it makes more sense to export as a zip
file, at which point you can just as well put the configuration
in a separate file of its own within the zip archive.

> The goal is to be able to fully export a blog either to
> migrate, upgrade or backup...

If I were to keep the settings inside Atom, I’d probably make a
special Entry to contain the configuration, and would use XOXO as
the basis for the format of its content. I think. I dunno, tho.

You could also have the configuration in an extension element
that’s part of the feed metadata. That would make sure that
trying to import the feed into a *different* weblogging system
won’t create a spurious posting with computer gibberish in it.

Then again maybe you *want* it to be inspectable.

There are a million ways to approach this, and each of them is
better at different things. It really depends on your goals.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>