Introduction

This is a simpleminded hack for Safari users on OS X that digs into the Bookmarks.plist file in search of new bookmarks to harvest and compose into a blog entry for consumption by a Blosxom-like weblog.

Since I migrated my blog to use Blosxom?, I use this to make quick blogging from links added to a toolbar bookmarks folder. The usage is simple: Hit Cmd-D, edit the bookmark title to add a comment, hit return. I can lazily link-blog in under 5 seconds, including a witty quip about the link in question. The only thing that slows me down is when, occasionally, I need to reselect the link-blog bookmark folder if I've recently made a bookmark elsewhere. If I don't feel like editing the title, I can just drag & drop the link straight from the address bar into a toolbar bookmark folder.

Previously, this was written in Java. However, I've rewritten this in Python, using 4Suite and Cheetah. Why? Because I could, in part, and because this new version is a bit simpler to maintain and run.

Downloads

• Latest version
  • http://www.decafbad.com/cvs/bmblogger2.tar.gz?view=tar

• Previous versions
  • http://www.decafbad.com/2003/03/BookmarkBlogger-20030324.tar.gz
  • http://www.decafbad.com/downloads/BookmarkBlogger-20030204.tar.gz

Usage

Configuration variables are found near the beginning of the script at bin/bmblogger.py:

• bmFolderName
  • Name of the Safari bookmark folder to examine
• bmUri
  • URI to Safari bookmarks file
• commentSep
  • Separator between title and optional comment in bookmark
• blogDir
  • Path where blog entries are generated
• seenFn
  • File containing URLs of blogged bookmarks
• entryTemplate
  • Cheetah template used in creating blog entry

Once these are set, invoke the script like this:

python bin/bmblogger.py

Running this program should result in a new single entry in the Blosxom category whose filename is based on the current time, listing all new links added to the bookmarks folder since the last time the command was run.

ShareAndEnjoy!