RavenPlus Version 1.0.505

I am releasing RavenPlus version 1.0.505 today. This release, although half-baked, is of special interest to existing users of Zoundry Raven and RavenPlus who are facing problems in publishing to Blogger/Blogspot. Google shutdown 'ClientLoging' completely in late May 2015, resulting in Raven and older versions of RavenPlus getting crippled.

At the moment, only the following Google OAuth2 aware publishing functions are available to users of Blogger/Blogspot:

• Posting new blog posts;
• Update an existing blog post;
• Delete an existing blog post; and
• Downloading blog posts from Blogger/Blogspot (including labels).

This, I believe, should be sufficient for existing users of Raven/RavenPlus to continue blogging and publishing to Blogger/Blogspot. Some manual setup is still necessary though - please see "Blogger/Blogspot - Setup Instructions" below. Sorry - I am just too lazy to write this one-off Python configuration script.

Publishing functions to other blog platforms (Wordpress for example) should work as before - unaffected - since I did not modify any of the publishing modules that came with Zoundry Raven Open Source. In fact, what I did, to be Google OAuth2 compliant in RavenPlus, is to write three new Python modules and to make the necessary declaration in the configuration file

"system\plugins\zoundry.raven.blogapp.pubsystems\zplugin.xml"

so that these modules can be loaded and used in RavenPlus.

One last thing. The Zoundry Raven installer creates some entries in the Windows registry - exception though if you opted to install 'Raven2Go' previously. You may need to uninstall Zoundry Raven so that these Windows registry entries are removed as otherwise, the wrong and older OAuth2 unaware configuration files of Zoundry Raven could be referred to and used when RavenPlus starts. Obviously, RavenPlus will not be able to publish to Blogger/Blogspot when this happens.

Change Log

Apart from the 4 Google OAuth2 aware publishing functions mentioned in the second paragraph above, I have also rolled in the fixes that I have made since version 1.0.504 into this release. To recap, these fixes solve the problem with the 'Save' button when flipping between the 'Design' and 'XHTML' tabs and when keyboard inputs triggered nothing to enable the 'Save' button.

I have also fixed the "SSL problem" when uploading pictures to Flickr - a problem that I found out about a week ago. In case if you are wondering what I did, I modified the file

"Raven\src\python\flickrapi\__init__.py"

to use 'https:' instead of 'http:' when connecting to Flickr.

I have not started work on Picasa picture uploads and importing of Blogger/Blogspot blogs for new users of RavenPlus yet. These functions will be incorporated into RavenPlus in future releases when they are done.

Download Link

I have uploaded RavenPlus Version 1.0.505 to my Google Drive and you can download the ZIP file here. Do read the Disclaimer below before downloading.

Blogger/Blogspot - Setup Instructions

First Things First - Backups

Before you begin, please, please perform a backup of you blog data first - at both the

• Blogger level - from the Blogger Dashboard, select
  
  Settings -> Other -> Export Blog (under the "Blog Tools" heading); and

• RavenPlus/Windows level - see How To Backup Your Data at the Zoundry Raven development blog.

Although I have been using while developing RavenPlus since June 2015 and have had not experience any data corruption, it is always comforting to know that we have a backup when the inevitable happens. You know how the saying goes:

Prevention is better than cure.

'client_secrets.json'

If you have not already done so, then do activate the Blogger API (v3) for yourself. Details can be found here.

Download the 'client_secrets.json' file from Google's Developer Console and place it in the Raven/RavenPlus data directory - please see the picture above. I have programmed RavenPlus to look for this file here.

Sorry for this rather awkward steps as Google does not allow me to share my Client ID and secrets in an Open Source project. And RavenPlus is an Open Source project.

'account.xml'

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Note: You might want to consider duplicating the file 'account.xml' first (i.e. a backup) before you modify it. RavenPlus might not start if this file got messed up.

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We now need to configure RavenPlus to use the OAuth2 aware publishing modules when publishing to Blogger/Blogspot.

Navigate into the 'accounts' directory in the Raven/RavenPlus data directory (see picture above). Open the file 'account.xml' with a text editor (Windows Notepad for example). The first couple of lines for a Blogger/Blogspot 'account.xml' file should look similar to what you can see in the picture below.

At line 14 (see picture above), replace the '<attribute name="type">' parameter (within '<api-info><attributes>' and '</attributes></api-info>')

zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.publishers.site.blogger.atom10

with

zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.publishers.site.blogger.v3

This is how this line looks like after modification:

<attribute name="type">zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.publishers.site.blogger.v3</attribute>

Make sure you do not alter any other parameter in this file or RavenPlus might not start or function properly.

And remember to save this file after modification.

Granting Access

Now start RavenPlus, compose a test post and click on 'Publish'.

On communicating with Blogger/Blogspot via OAuth2 for the first time, your default web browser will get launched and the above screen will appear. You might be prompted to login to your Google account if you have not already login previously.

All you have to do now is to just click on the 'Accept' button. This will in turn create a file called 'credentials.dat' (known as a refresh token, I think) in the same directory as the file 'client_secrets.json'.

That's it.

Happy Blogging!

Note:

1. There is a time-limit to the above 'granting' process. So if you fail to publish your post, just click on the 'Publish' button and repeated the whole thing again. I know I did, because I was fumbling a bit while login in to my Google account - I should have pre-login first before I started.

2. If you were to have messed things up and RavenPlus appears to be frozen or the publishing function never seems to end, just go to a web browser on your PC and at the address bar key in 'http://localhost:8080/' to unlock RavenPlus.

Disclaimer:
This software is provided "as is" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. You, the user, accept the full responsibility for the usage of this application RavenPlus, excluding the developer, ie. me the owner of this blog, from any liability and any consequence that may derive. Remember to do an Anti-virus scan of the downloaded ZIP file before unzipping it into a folder. You might want to consider doing a full backup of your computer hard drive with Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost before installing and running this application.

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