del.icio.us integration with FluidDB though fdb.py 0.8

My fdb.py library (available at GitHub) includes the ability to upload bookmarks and tags from del.icio.us to FluidDB. It also (just because that's the old code I based it on) has the ability to create a home page consisting of all your bookmarks tagged with a particular tag or set of tags (home by default) in a dense grid.

This post is currently a verbatim dump of the new README-DELICIOUS file I wrote as documentation for how to use it. But I might reformat it later, and will almost certain write some posts on the relationship between del.icio.us and FluidDB.

CODE FOR WORKING WITH DELICIOUS DISTRIBUTED WITH FDB
====================================================

Because FluidDB shares some characteristics with del.icio.us
(http://del.icio.us/ or http://delicious.com), some code for
working with del.icio.us is distributed with fdb.

There are four files:

  1. delicious2fluiddb.py
     This imports data from del.icio.us to FluidDB.
     It uses library code from delicious.py (below).

  2. delicious.py
     This uses the delicious API to extract bookmarks and tags from
     delicious, as an XML feed, and then to create a web page
     (normally a home page) with a fairly dense set of links to
     pages tagged with a paricular tag (normally 'home') on delicious.
     It also caches the data it extracts (in files).

  3. deliconfig.py
     This configuration file controls the behaviour of delicious.py.
     It partly provides information about paths for various data,
     and partly controls formatting of the home page created by delicious.py

  4. delicious.cgi
     This is a CGI script that can be used to run delicious.py.
     The typical usage mode is:

        Add or modify some bookmarks on delicious
        Run the cgi script (usually by clicking a link on the home page).
        Return home

     This updates the home page.



IMPORTING BOOKMARKS FROM DELICIOUS TO FLUIDDB
=============================================

This should be straightforward.
First, make sure that fdb.py is working by running
the tests.   (See README file.)

Then edit deliconfig.py and at the very least set the
cache path to an xml file name in location you
can write to and set credentials to a file containing
your username and password for delicious on separatelines.
Like this:

username
password

You probably also need to set the homepage to a writable
location.

If all you want to do is upload your bookmarks and tags
to FluidDB, you can probably ignore the rest.

(Though if you don't have any bookmarks tagged home, it
might be a good idea to set tags to a bookmark that you
do have.)

If you have already downloaded your delicious bookmarks
in xml, just set the cache variable to point to the relevant
XML file and run with -c.

Then, to download your data from delicious, run

    python delicious.py

If you have already got them in the file, you can skip
this stage.   (delicious2fluiddb.py reads from the cache.)

Then, to upload to FluidDB, type

    python delicious2fluiddb.py


WHAT IT DOES
============

It creates an object for each of your shared bookmarks with
the about tag (dluiddb/about) set to URL of the bookmarked page.

Then, for each tag you have, it created a FluidDB tag under
your username with the same name as the delicious tag.

It currently ignores all other fields, though I will fix that
in a later release.


KNOWN PROBLEMS
==============

Contrary to the FluidDB documentation, tags with colons
in the name (notably, tags that start for:) fail.
This is because FluidDB currently bans colons in tag names.
This is fixed in the sandbox (as I type), and should go live
soon, so I don't plan to alter this functionality.


NOTE ON DELICIOUS BACKUPS
=========================

Because the author is paranoid, delicious.py never overwrites
an XML dump from delicious, but simple renames the old one with
a datestamp.   I have about 180 backups of delicious.
Obviously, you can delete them if you don't like keeping backups.


CREATING A HOME PAGE
====================

When you run delicious.py, it creates a web page in the location
specified by the homepage location in deliconfig.py.
This basically consists of links for all your bookmarks tagged
with 'home' (or any any space-separated list of tags you set
in the variable tags).

The body of the link will be the title from delicious unless you
put something in the notes field, in which case that will be used
instead.   This is particularly useful if the title is long.

There's some special functionality allowing two related links
to be put in one position.   This is achieved, given one link
call "foo" bu having the notes field of another set to "foo +bar".

If you do this, a single position in the grid will get two links,
the first called foo, pointing to its URL, and the second called
bar, pointing to its URL.   For example, Google.com with title
Google and Google UK with notes set to "Google +UK".
This produces two adjacent links, the first of which is called Google
and the second of which is called UK, pointing at the two Google
sites.


CREATING A LINK TO REFRESH YOUR HOME PAGE
=========================================

If you really like the delicious tag-based home page, you might
want to install delicious.cgi to run this from a link in your
browser.   All you really need to do for that is to stick
delicious.cgi, delicious.py and deliconfig.py into your cgi-bin
directory, suitably configured, get it running, and then bookmark
that link from delicious, tagging it with home.
If you're doing this, you need to make sure that some of the locations
in deliconfig.py are writable by your Apache (or any other web server
you might be using.)

When you run it successfully, you get output like this:

Reading entries from del.icio.us
Writing cache /Users/njr/Sites/cache/delicious.xml
Building home page /Users/njr/Sites/cache/index.html
Home page built and backed up
Completed OK.