Defining Weblog Capabilities with the Options Element

Defining Weblog Capabilities with t...

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The <options> element within the manifest enables providers to explicitly specify the capabilities of their service so that Writer can make available all of the correct features in its UI. Providers can specify a base client-type (e.g. “MovableType”) and then add or remove features from those implied by this type.

Note that overrides contained within the <options> element can either enable or disable a capability. Therefore, both of the following scenarios are possible:

A weblog that supports the Metaweblog API plus one or two capabilities of an advanced API can add these capabilities selectively.
A weblog that supports the MovableType API fully save for one or two capabilities can disable these capabilities selectively.

In order to determine the capabilities of a given service Writer performs two steps:

Determine the capabilities implied by the API type (Metaweblog, MovableType, or WordPress). The API type is initially read from the RSD file during weblog configuration, but can be overridden later in the manifest by supplying a <clientType> element within the manifest’s <options> section.
Apply overrides contained within the <options> element of the service’s Writer manifest.

Format

Valid sub-elements for the <options> element include:

<clientType>

Optional (no need to provide this if the value provided in the weblog’s RSD file is accurate). Base client type for the purpose of calculating weblog capabilities. Valid values include:

• Metaweblog

• MovableType

• WordPress

Capabilities Elements

Zero or more capabilities elements (valid elements enumerated below).

An example options element might look like this:

<options>
    <clientType>Metaweblog</clientType>
    <supportsNewCategories>Yes</supportsNewCategories>
    <supportsTrackbacks>Yes</supportsTrackbacks>
    <supportsEmbeds>Yes</supportsEmbeds>
</options>

The following table enumerates all of the available API capabilities along with the default values for the three supported APIs.

API Capability	Metaweblog	MovableType	WordPress
supportsPostAsDraft	●	●	●
supportsFileUpload	●	●	●
supportsExtendedEntries		●	●
supportsCustomDate	●	●	●
supportsCategories	●	●	●
supportsCategoriesInline	●		●
supportsMultipleCategories	●	●	●
supportsHierarchicalCategories			●
supportsNewCategories			●
supportsNewCategoriesInline			●
supportsKeywords		●
supportsCommentPolicy		●	●
supportsPingPolicy		●	●
supportsAuthor			●
supportsSlug			●
supportsPassword			●
supportsExcerpt		●	●
supportsTrackbacks		●	●
supportsPages			●
supportsPageParent			●
supportsPageOrder			●

There are a number of other Writer features which rely on knowledge of service capabilities that aren’t related to weblog APIs (e.g. does the weblog allows embeds?). These values can also be overridden using the <options> element. The defaults for these values are as follows:

Capability	Default Value
supportsEmptyTitles	Yes
requiresHtmlTitles	No
requiresXHTML	No
supportsScripts	Unknown
supportsEmbeds	Unknown
characterSet	UTF-8
maxCategoryNameLength	(None)
invalidPostIdFaultCodePattern	(None)
invalidPostIdFaultStringPattern	(None)
supportsAutoUpdate	Yes

Behavior

Depending upon the values implied or specified for each of the available options, Writer makes assumptions about the expected behavior of the weblog provider. The following table summarizes the expected behavior for each of the options.

API Capability	Expected Provider Behavior
supportsPostAsDraft	Respects the publish flag on metaWeblog.newPost and metaWeblog.editPost calls
supportsFileUpload	Supports metaWeblog.newMediaObject
supportsExtendedEntries	Supports mt_text_more field of post struct
supportsCustomDate	Supports explicit specification of dateCreated field of post struct
supportsCategories	Supports categorization of posts using either a category array within the post struct or mt.setPostCategories
supportsCategoriesInline	Supports categories field of post struct
supportsMultipleCategories	Allows specification of more than one category per post
supportsHierarchicalCategories	Supports wp.getCategories and wp.addCategory
supportsNewCategories	Supports the addition of new categories from the client via either inline specification (see below) or via the wp.addCategory method
supportsNewCategoriesInline	Previously unused categories included within the categories field are automatically added
supportsKeywords	Supports mt_keywords field of post struct
supportsCommentPolicy	Supports mt_allow_comments field of post struct
supportsPingPolicy	Supports mt_allow_pings field of post struct
supportsAuthor	Supports wp_author field of post struct
supportsSlug	Supports either wp_slug or mt_basname field of post struct
supportsPassword	Supports wp_password field of post struct
supportsExcerpt	Supports mt_excerpt field of post struct
supportsTrackbacks	Supports mt_tb_ping_urls field of post struct
supportsPages	Supports WordPress page editing API: wp.newPage, wp.editPage, wp.getPage, wp.getPages, wp.getPageList, and wp.deletePage
supportsPageParent	Supports wp_page_parent_id field of page struct
supportsPageOrder	Supports wp_page_order field of page struct
supportsEmptyTitles	Allows empty string as a valid value for the title field of the post struct
requiresHtmlTitles	Title field is interpreted as HTML content rather than plain text
requiresXHTML	Generate XHTML style markup by default
supportsScripts	Allows embedded script within post content
supportsEmbeds	Allows object embeds within post content

The options element also supports a number of other values which effect Writer’s interaction with the weblog service. This table enumerates these options along with their valid values and expected behavior:

Option	Behavior
characterSet	Determines the character set that Writer uses for XML-RPC interactions with the weblog (the default encoding is UTF-8). Valid values for this field correspond to the “.NET Name” column in the table of Code Page Identifiers found at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms776446.aspx
maxCategoryNameLength	Indicates that Writer should enforce a character limit for the names of new categories.
invalidPostIdFaultCodePattern invalidPostIdFaultStringPattern	In the case of posts created with Writer that are subsequently deleted online the call to metaWeblog.editPost will fail because of an invalid post id. For this case Writer will automatically retry using metaWeblog.newPost if the fault code and/or fault string returned from editPost match the regular expression patterns provided in these options.
supportsAutoUpdate	Indicates that Writer should automatically poll for updates to the editing manifest whenever a post is created or opened.

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