MT PHP API?

July 19, 2006 3:36 PM

Movable Type PHP library: is it possible to use the PHP library in the same fashion as the perl library?

Maybe I am not making sense. MT comes w/ the perl library, e.g. MT.pm, Entry.pm, etc.

I've taken lately to writing shell scripts and cron jobs in PHP, but I have one perl script (and another coming) that must be in perl cos they use the MT library to write an automated entry, e.g.:

$entry = MT::Entry->new;
...
$entry->save;
$mt->rebuild_entry(Entry => $entry, BuildDependencies => true) or die $mt->errstr;

So but lately MT comes with an extensive PHP library (mt directory/php/lib). But it seems like this isn't really a library/API, but rather some basic functions. Is it possible to duplicate the above functionality using MT's php lib?

posted by xmutex to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: PHP can do pretty much anything Perl does, as its a full fledged language - so I'm guessing you could rewrite the MT stuff into php. I don't think you'd want to, though, as MT is written in perl so you'd basically have to rewrite a big part of MT in php -- not a small task.

For something like this, you'd probably want to use webservices. Thats the usual way to programmatically create/edit/read posts from a blog. I'm sure that MT supports the metaweblog API, so probably the best way to do is to get a PHP metaweblog library and have that talk to MT.

MT & metaweblog - http://www.movabletype.org/siteuk/docs/mtmanual_programmatic.html

metaweblog library in php

These links were from very quick google searches - you may find better resources/libraries if you look harder.
posted by rsanheim at 6:29 AM on July 20, 2006

I will second that the right way to do this would be through an xml-rpc call, rather than reinventing the wheel.
posted by adamrice at 7:46 AM on July 20, 2006

The PHP library that comes with Movable Type is 99%[1] read-only. It is meant to be used to dynamically render blogs. So there are no functions provided to create entries and/or rebuild the static pages from PHP. XMLRPC is the way to go.

The other alternative is to use the Perl-based API and invoke that script from PHP.

[1]: The 1% I allude to above is a feature of MT 3.31 which lets you save back to the database plugin configuration settings by PHP-based plugins.
posted by bschoate at 1:48 PM on July 20, 2006 [1 favorite]

^^^ The ultimate authority, btw...
posted by fooljay at 12:50 AM on February 12, 2007