# blog: (micro)blogging management

Blog commands are high level tools to handle an XMPP blog. They are using the generic pubsub arguments

## Common Publishing Options

The set and edit commands support a range of options for customizing blog post creation and editing. Some notable options include:

`--no-id-suffix`

> This option removes the randomly generated suffix from the auto-generated, user-friendly ID. The suffix is initially added to ensure unique IDs, especially useful when two posts have similar titles.

> Note

> When the `--no-id-suffix` option is selected, an extra validation is performed to check for ID uniqueness. If an existing item already uses the same ID, a suffix is added to the new ID regardless of the option, ensuring no existing content is overwritten. This additional check incurs a slight performance impact due to the extra request needed.

`--alt-link URL [MEDIA_TYPE]`

> Add an alternative link to a blog post, such as a corresponding HTTP page. The URL parameter is mandatory, while MEDIA_TYPE is optional. Incorporate `{service}`, `{node}`, and `{item}` as template values within the URL. These will be replaced with the actual values when the item is published. To use curly braces literally, double them: `{{` and `}}`.

### example

Louise wants to add a link to her public facing HTML blog in her item:

    $ li blog set --alt-link https://example.org/blog/{node}/{item}

## set

publish a blog item.

pubsub commands are used to specify the destination item.

`stdin` is used to get the body of the blog post.

Also see Common Publishing Options.

To publish an end-to-end encrypted item, you can use the `-e, --encrypt` flag, and share secrets with pubsub/secret: share, revoke or rotate node secrets. Please read Pubsub Encryption for more details.

You can encrypt a single item to targeted entities with the `--encrypt-for` flag (not to be confused with `--encrypt` which is used when a whole node is encrypted). Please read Pubsub Encryption for more details.

To cryptographically sign an item, you can use the `-X, --sign` flag (a mnemonic way to remember the short option is to think of a cross made as a signature on a document). Signature can then be checked with pubsub/signature: Sign and Check Items Signatures. Please read Pubsub Encryption for more details.

### examples

Create a blog post with a body, a subject, 2 tags, and with comments allowed:

    $ echo "This is post body" | li blog set -T "This is a test message" -t test -t li -C

Create a blog post with rich content using markdown syntax, and no subject:

    $ echo "This is a **rich** body" | li blog set -S markdown

## get

get command retrieves one or more blog post(s) from specified location (by default the personal blog of the profile).

output can be customised to only retrieve some keys, or to use a specific template. For instance, the following command retrieves only the title and publication date of the personal blog of the profile:

    $ li blog get -k title -k published

pubsub commands are used to specify the blog location.

### examples

Retrieve personal blog of the profile using fancy output with a verbosity of 1 (to show publication date):

    $ li blog get -O fancy -v

Retrieve title and publication date of last 3 blog posts from the blog at https://www.goffi.org:

    $ li blog get -m 3 -u https://www.goffi.org -k title -k published

Retrieve last 2 posts of personal blog, and output them in browser using default template:

    $ li blog get -m 2 -O template --oo browser

## edit

With edit command you can create a new blog post or modify an existing one using your local editor (the one set in `$EDITOR`). You’ll edit 2 things: the body of the post, and the metadata which contain things like title, comments infos, or tags.

For some common editors (like vim or Emacs), the editor will be automatially opened using a split screen with body in one side, and metadata on the other. If the editor is not supported or doesn’t support split screen, you’ll edit first the body, then the metadata. You can also specify editor and arguments in `libervia.conf`, see configuration below

If you don’t change anything or publish an empty blog post, the edition will be cancelled.

In the metadata (see below for details), you can use `"publish": false` to forbid the publication (or set it with `--no-publish argument`). In this case, when you’ll save your modification and quit your editor, the blog post will not be published but saved locally in a draft. To continue your work later, just start your edition with the `-D, --current` option like this:

    $ li blog edit -D

Note that item location must be re-specified if it has been used to create the draft, so you’ll have to reproduce the arguments to specify service, node or item (or the URL), other data like tags will be restored from draft file of metadata.

You can specify the syntax by using `-S SYNTAX, --syntax SYNTAX`. If not specified, the syntax set in your parameters will be used.

When you edit a blog post, it is often useful to activate the `-P, --preview` option, this will launch a web browser and refresh the page each time you save a modification in your editor. By default, the browser registered as default in your system will be used, and a new tab will be opened on each modification. This is not ideal, and we recommand to set you configuration to activate automatic refreshing of the page instead, see preview configuration below to see how to do.

Note

If –preview doesn’t work, use `li blog preview` (see below) to get error messages. On GNU/Linux, Be sure that inotify Python module is installed correctly.

Also see Common Publishing Options.

To publish an end-to-end encrypted item, you can use the `-e, --encrypt` flag, and share secrets with pubsub/secret: share, revoke or rotate node secrets. Please read Pubsub Encryption for more details.

You can encrypt a single item to targeted entities with the `--encrypt-for` flag (not to be confused with `--encrypt` which is used when a whole node is encrypted). Please read Pubsub Encryption for more details.

To cryptographically sign an item, you can use the `-X, --sign` flag (a mnemonic way to remember the short option is to think of a cross made as a signature on a document). Signature can then be checked with pubsub/signature: Sign and Check Items Signatures. Please read Pubsub Encryption for more details.

### examples

Edit a new blog post with comments on your personal blog, using default syntax and preview:

    $ li blog edit -P --comments

Modifiy a draft previously saved using the `"publish": false` metadata:

    $ li blog edit -D

Correct a typo in your last published blog post:

    $ li blog edit --last-item

Edit the blog item at an HTTPS URL using XHTML syntax:

    $ li blog edit -u https://www.example.net/some_xmpp_blog_article.html -S xhtml

Create a new blog post on a XMPP blog node using its HTTPS URL (supposing here that https://example.net is a XMPP blog node):

    $ li blog edit -u https://www.example.net

### metadata

Metadata is set using a JSON object. The key you can use are:

publish

  boolean indicating if item can be published. Set to `false` if you want to work on a draft and to avoid accidental publication.

atom_id

  atom entry identifier. This should not be modified manually.

published

  time of initial publication (unix time). This should not be modified manually.

language

  language of the content

comments

  array of URIs to the comments node, if any.

tag

  array of tags, if any

author

  human readable name of the entry author

author_jid

  jid of the author. This should notbe modified manually.

author_jid_verified

  true if the pubsub service confirmed that author_jid is the one of the publisher. It is useless to modify this variable.

title

  the title of the message

title_rich

  the rich title of the message, in current text syntax. It will be automatically converted to xhtml.

### configuration

#### editor

Local editor used is by default the one set in `$EDITOR` environment variable, but you can specify one in `libervia.conf`. To do so, you have to set the name of an editor executable in the `editor` option in `[li]` section.

You can specify the args to use by using `blog_editor_args` option. Use `{content_file}` to get the path of the main content file (the body of the blog post), and `{metadata_file}` to get the path of the json metadata.

    [li]
    editor = kate
    blog_editor_args = {content_file} {metadata_file}

#### preview

To set the preview, you can use the options `blog_preview_open_cmd` and `blog_preview_update_cmd` in your `[li]` section. the former is the command to use to open your browser when edition starts, and the later is the command to use when a modification is saved. In both cases you may use `{url}` to set the location of local HTML file.

This can be used to activate automatic refreshing of the page.

For Konqueror, you can use its D-Bus API to do refreshing. Ensure that `qdbus` is installed on your system, and enter the following lines in your `libervia.conf`:

    [li]
    blog_preview_open_cmd = konqueror {url}
    blog_preview_update_cmd = /bin/sh -c "qdbus $(qdbus org.kde.konqueror\*) /konqueror/MainWindow_1 reload"

For Firefox, you may use `xdotool` on X11. Once you have installed this tool, enter the following lines in your `libervia.conf`:

    [li]
    blog_preview_open_cmd = firefox -new-tab {url}
    blog_preview_update_cmd = /bin/sh -c "WID=$(xdotool search --name 'Mozilla Firefox' | head -1); xdotool windowactivate $WID; xdotool key F5"

This xdotool technique can be adapted to other browsers.

#### syntax extensions

A dictionary with a mapping from syntax name to file extension can be used. This can be useful to activate the right syntax highlighting in your editor. There is a default mapping which can be overriden.

The mapping is set in the `syntax_ext_dict` option of the `[li]` section of your `libervia.conf` file. For instance, if your prefer do your `.markdown` for temp files instead of the default `.md`, you can use this:

    [li]
    syntax_ext_dict = {"markdown": "markdown"}

the first `markdown` is the name of the syntax (could be an other syntax like `xhtml`), while the second if the file extension.

## rename

Move a item to a new ID. This works the same as rename, the only difference is that node defaults to microblog default namespace.

### example

After a typo, a use want to rename the blog item with ID `my_great_tittle_123a` to `my_great_title_123a`:

    $ li blog rename -i my_great_tittle_123a my_great_title_123a

## repeat

Re-publish a blog item on profile’s blog.

This is similar to may be called in other networks “share” or “boot”, the goal is mainly to send this post of interest to our subscribers to make it more visible.

It only needs arguments to get item to repeat location.

### example

Pierre wants to repeat a blog post from Louise to make it more visible:

    $ li blog repeat -s louise@example.org -n urn:xmpp:microblog:0 -i culture-new-caledonia-456f

## preview

This command will show the specified file in browser, and refresh it when changes are detected. Configuration is the same as for edit preview. This can be used if you have already started an edition with `li blog edit` but forgot to use the `-P, --preview` arguments.

### example

Preview the draft at `~/.local/share/libervia/blog/some_name/blog_something.md`:

    $ li blog preview ~/.local/share/libervia/blog/some_name/blog_something.md

## import

With this command you can import an external blog in a XMPP blog at the specified pubsub location.

The import is done using an importer name and a location which depends of the importer (it can be a path to a file, an URL to a blog, or something else). Let empty to get list of importers, and specify only importer name to get its description.

By default, found images are re-uploaded to XMPP server, if you want to keep original URLs, use the `--no-images-upload` option.

Alternatively, you can re-upload images except for a specific host with `--upload-ignore-host UPLOAD_IGNORE_HOST`. The images for the specified host will keep there original URLs while other will be uploaded to XMPP server.

You shoud specify original blog host using `--host HOST` argument, this is used notably to reconstruct relative URLs of media.

Importers may have specific options, you can set them using the `-o NAME VALUE, --option NAME VALUE` argument. Check the importer description for details.

### examples:

List available importers:

    $ li blog import

Get description of `dotclear` importer:

    $ li blog import dotclear

import a Dotclear blog:

    $ li blog import dotclear /path/to/dotclear.dump

import a Dotclear blog without uploading images:

    $ li blog import --no-images-upload dotclear /path/to/dotclear.dump

## attachments

Subcommands to add or remove data attached to pubsub items. Please check blog/attachments: (un)attach Metadata to Blog Items.