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Howto: Hack the Metaweblog API to work with Simple Tags

Recently I was approached by Jake Mauer who uses Windows Live Writer in combination with ExpressionEngine’s Metaweblog API Module (MWAM) to update his weblog.

He’s using Simple Tags and setup Live Writer’s keywords-field to populate his tag-field in ExpressionEngine but noticed that the entries don’t show up in the tag-list when a tag is clicked.

Due to the complete lack of extension hooks in the MWAM posting, updating or deleting entries in Live Writer will not be noticed by Simple Tags. Hence the tag-table won’t be up-to-date unless you manually update the entries directly in the Control Panel or rebuild your index under Modules > Simple Tag.

While I normally don’t advocate hacks to core-files, sometimes there’s no alternative to make things work.

The following hack is intended to make the MWAM play nice with Simple Tags. To achieve this code snippets must be inserted in four locations of one file.

This hack assumes that you map the "Keywords Field" in the MWAM to your Simple Tags tag-field.

Remember that anytime you update your ExpressionEngine, you must either re-apply this hack afterwards or find out beforehand whether EllisLabs's original mod.metaweblog_api.php remained unchanged and can be omitted during the update.

While this IS tedious work it must NEVER deter you from doing regular EE updates.

And now for the hack:

Inside your system-directory find the file /modules/metaweblog_api/mod.metaweblog_api.php and open it.

Note: The following line numbers refer to ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 Build 20090515. Should the MWAM be updated by EllisLab sometime in the future, the actual line numbers may change.

We'll work through the changes from bottom to top so our code insertions don't affect subsequent numeration.

1.

At the bottom of the file locate line 2215

2213: } 2214: /* END */ 2215: <-------------- Insert here 2216: 2217: } 2218: /* END */

and insert the following snippet ### ST Hack ### function st_update($entry_id, $weblog_id, $keywords, $status) { global $DB, $REGX; $DB->query("DELETE FROM exp_sz_simple_tags WHERE entry_id='$entry_id';"); if ($status == "closed") return; $tagline = $REGX->xss_clean($keywords); $tags = explode(",",$tagline); $tagkeys = array_keys($tags); foreach ($tagkeys AS $tagkeyname) { $tags[$tagkeyname] = trim($tags[$tagkeyname]); $tags[$tagkeyname] = str_replace("/","",$tags[$tagkeyname]); if ( $tags[$tagkeyname] != "" ) { $tag = $REGX->create_url_title($tags[$tagkeyname]); $DB->query("REPLACE INTO exp_sz_simple_tags (entry_id, weblog_id, tag, realtag) VALUES ($entry_id, $weblog_id, '$tag', '".$tags[$tagkeyname]."');"); } } } function st_delete($entry_id) { global $DB; $DB->query("DELETE FROM exp_sz_simple_tags WHERE entry_id='$entry_id';"); } ### ST Hack ###

2.

Locate Line 1901

1899: $STAT->update_comment_stats($query->row['weblog_id']); 1900: $STAT->update_trackback_stats($query->row['weblog_id']); 1901: <-------------- Insert here 1902: return new XML_RPC_Response(new XML_RPC_Values(1,'boolean')); 1903: } 1904: /* END */

and insert the following snippet ### ST Hack ### $this->st_delete($query->row['entry_id']); ### ST Hack ###

3.

Locate Line 779

777: $DB->query($DB->update_string('exp_weblog_titles', $metadata, "entry_id = '$entry_id'")); 778: $DB->query($DB->update_string('exp_weblog_data', $entry_data, "entry_id = '$entry_id'")); 779: <-------------- Insert here 780: /** --------------------------------- 781: /** Insert Categories, if any 782: /** ---------------------------------*/

and insert the following snippet ### ST Hack ### if (isset($this->field_data['keywords'])) { $this->st_update($entry_id, $this->weblog_id, $this->field_data['keywords'], $this->status ); } ### ST Hack ###

4.

Locate Line 433

430: $entry_data['site_id'] = $this->site_id; 431; 432: $DB->query($DB->insert_string('exp_weblog_data', $entry_data)); 433: <-------------- Insert here 434: /** --------------------------------- 435: /** Insert Categories, if any 436: /** ---------------------------------*/

and insert the following snippet ### ST Hack ### if (isset($this->field_data['keywords'])) { $this->st_update($entry_data['entry_id'], $this->weblog_id, $this->field_data['keywords'], $this->status ); } ### ST Hack ###

Save the changes and you are done.

2009-05-19 at 21:24 * Comments: 0 * Pingbacks: 0 * Permalink
Tags: howto - simple tags - hacks - metaweblog api

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