Import your WordPress data into Oxite

tconte — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:56:00 GMT

Have you tried Oxite yet? Like what you see? Maybe you have a WordPress blog you would like to migrate to Oxite? I have written a very bare-bones import process that will allow you to import your WordPress data into Oxite. Right now I only handle Posts, but I don’t import categories yet; I’ll try to improve the process in the future.

Before using the tool, you must export your data from WordPress. In the Admin interface, go to Manage and then Export. This will let you generate an XML file containing all your posts and their categories.

You will then use this file to import the data into Oxite.

To install the WordPress import page: download the ZIP file below, and add the files into the OxiteSite project. This will add an ImportWP.aspx page. Run Oxite and load this page. It will present you with an Upload control you can use to send your WordPress XML export.

If you look at the code you will see it is very simple! The main method to create a Post in Oxite is as follows:

   1: protected void Create_Post(string title, string bodyShort, string body, string slug)   2: {   3:     IPost post = PostRepository.CreatePost();   4:        5:     post.Title = title;   6:     post.BodyShort = bodyShort;   7:     post.Body = body;   8:     post.Slug = slug;   9:    10:     post.CreatorUserID = importUser.ID;  11:     post.State = (byte)EntityState.Normal;  12:       13:     post.Published = DateTime.Now.ToUniversalTime();  14:    15:     PostRepository.AddPost(post, null);  16:     PostRepository.SubmitChanges();  17:    18:     AreaRepository.AddPostToArea(post.ID, blogArea.ID);  19:     AreaRepository.SubmitChanges();  20: }

One thing you should probably change is the IUser to use to import; by default I will use “Admin”.

Have fun!

[update] After discussing with the Oxite team, I realized I didn't handle properly the Body and BodyShort fields. I will post an update later on with details and a new version of the migration tool!

ASP.NET MVC Framework

tconte — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:39:00 GMT

I am fond of MVC. I have done my fair share of Java programming for the Web, and this pattern is nearly ubiquitous in Java-based Web frameworks; I have used Struts quite a bit, and I used it as the basis for the 2004 Olympic Games Web site. Spring, WebWork, are other Java MVC frameworks. I find it fascinating that such an old pattern, dating back to the Xerox Smalltalk era (1979, says WikiPedia), is so well suited to developing applications for the Web.

Microsoft has followed a very different path with its ASP.NET Web Forms framework. Their goal was not to select and utilize a pattern that would match the actual implementation of the Web, with its HTTP/HTML duality that closely matches the Controller and View layers... The goal was to abstract this implementation completely, and reproduce a programming model that would match their most popular programming environment, Visual Basic.

In this sense, ASP.NET Web Forms are simply amazing. You can forget completely about HTML forms and HTTP query parameters, hiding input fields to maintain state, etc. Everything is taken care of for you. You can start programming for the Web exactly as you did in VB for Windows applications. It's very clever.

However, I have always been a little bit uneasy around ASP.NET Web Forms compared to an MVC environment, probably because I don't have a VB background, but rather a pure Web past, i.e. I started writing CGI scripts for NCSA Server way before Apache even existed, and I think my first CGI scripts were written in Unix shell scripts, before I discovered Perl.

It seems I'm not the only one to find some shortcomings to ASP.NET Web Forms, and MVP Rick Strahl describes his view in detail in this blog entry: What's Ailing ASP.NET Web Forms - Rick Strahl's Web Log.

This is why I am very interested by the new ASP.NET MVC Framework that Scott Guthrie announced in October. I think it looks like a fantastic tool to build complex Web sites, and it will allow ASP.NET developers to use a very mature and well-known architectural pattern for their Web developments. I will try to get my hands on the public preview as soon as it's available, hopefully before the end of the year.

(cross-posted to my personal blog)

Thomas Conté - Microsoft France : ASP.NET

Import your WordPress data into Oxite

ASP.NET MVC Framework