NAME
    Net::MovableType - light-weight MovableType client

SYNOPSIS
      use Net::MovableType;
      my $mt = new Net::MovableType('http://mt.handalak.com/cgi-bin/xmlrpc');
      $mt->username('user');
      $mt->password('secret');
      $mt->blogId(1);

      my $entries = $mt->getRecentPosts(5);
      while ( my $entry = shift @$entries ) {
        printf("[%02d] - %s\n\tURI: %s\n",
               $entry->{postid}, $entry->{title}, $entry->{'link'} )
      }

DESCRIPTION
    Using *Net::MovableType* you can post new entries, edit existing
    entries, browse entries and users blogs, and perform most of the
    features you can perform through accessing your MovableType account.

    Since *Net::MovableType* uses MT's *remote procedure call* gateway, you
    can do it from any computer with Internet connection.

PROGRAMMING INTERFACE
    *Net::MovableType* promises an intuitive, user friendly, Object Oriented
    interface for managing your web sites published through MovableType.
    Most of the method names correspond to those documented in MovableType's
    Programming Interface Manual.

  CREATING MT OBJECT

    Before you start doing anything, you need to have a *MovableType* object
    handy. You can create a *MovableType* object by calling "new()" -
    constructor method:

        $mt = new MovableType('http://mt.handalak.com/cgi-bin/mt-xmlrpc.cgi');
        # or
        $mt = new MovableType('http://author.handalak.com/rsd.xml');
        # or even..
        $mt = new MovableType('/home/sherzodr/public_html/author/rsd.xml');

    Notice, you need to pass at least one argument while creating *MT*
    object, that is the location of your either mt-xmlrpc.cgi file, or your
    web site's rsd.xml file. Default templates of *MT* already generate
    rsd.xml file for you. If they don't, you should get one from
    http://www.movabletype.org/

    If your rsd.xml file is available locally, you should provide a full
    path to the file instead of providing it as a URL. Reading the file
    locally is more efficient than fetching it over the Web.

    Giving it a location of your rsd.xml file is preferred, since it will
    ensure that your "blogId()" will be set properly. Otherwise, you will
    have to do it manually calling "blogId()" (see later).

    It is very important that you get this one right. Otherwise,
    *Net::MovableType* will know neither about where your web site is nor
    how to access them.

    *MovableType* requires you to provide valid username/password pair to do
    most of the things. So you need to tell *MovableType* object about your
    username and passwords, so it can use them to access the resources.

    You can login in two ways; by either providing your *username* and
    *password* while creating *MT* object, or by calling "username()" and
    "password()" methods after creating *MT* object:

        # creating MT object with valid username/password:
        $proxy = 'http://mt.handalak.com/cgi-bin/mt-xmlrpc.cgi';
        $mt = new MovableType($proxy, 'author', 'password');

        # or
        $mt = new MovableType($proxy);
        $mt->username('author');
        $mt->password('password');

    "username()" and "password()" methods are used for both setting username
    and password, as well as for retrieving username and password for the
    current logged in. Just don't pass it any arguments should you wish to
    use for the latter purpose.

  DEFINING A BLOG ID

    Defining a blog id may not be necessary if you generated your
    *Net::MovableType* object with an rsd.xml file. Otherwise, read on.

    As we will see in subsequent sections, most of the *MovableType*'s
    methods operate on specific web log. For defining a default web log to
    operate on, after setting above *username* and *password*, you can also
    set your default blog id using "blogId()" method:

        $mt->blogId(1);

    To be able to do that, you first need to know your blog id. There are no
    documented ways of retrieving your blog id, except for investigating the
    URL of your MovableType account panel. Just login to your MovableType
    control panel (through mt.cgi script). In the first screen, you should
    see a list of your web logs. Click on the web log in question, and look
    at the URL of the current window. In my case, it is:

        http://mt.handalak.com/cgi-bin/mt?__mode=menu&blog_id=1

    Notice *blog_id* parameter? That's the one!

    Wish you didn't have to go through all those steps to find out your blog
    id? *Net::MovableType* provides "resolveBlogId()" method, which accepts
    a name of the web log, and returns correct blogId:

        $blog_id = $mt->resolveBlogId('lost+found');
        $mt->blogId($blog_id);

    Another way of retrieving information about your web logs is to get all
    the lists of your web logs by calling "getUsersBlogs()" method:

        $blogs = $mt->getUsersBlogs();

    "getUsersBlogs()" returns list of blogs, where each blog is represented
    with a hashref. Each hashref holds such information as *blogid*,
    *blogName* and *url*. Following example lists all the blogs belonging to
    the current logged in user:

        $blogs = $mt->getUsersBlogs();
        for $b ( @$blogs ) {
            printf("[%02d] %s\n\t%s\n", $b->{blogid}, $b->{blogName}, $b->{url})
        }

  POSTING NEW ENTRY

    By now, you know how to login and how to define your blog_id. Now is a
    good time to post a new article to your web log. That's what "newPost()"
    method is for.

    "newPost()" expects at least a single argument, which should be a
    reference to a hash containing all the details of your new entry. First,
    let's define a new entry to be posted on our web log:

        $entry = {
            title       => "Hello World from Net::MovableType",
            description => "Look ma, no hands!"
        };

    Now, we can pass above "$entry" to our "newPost()" method:

        $mt->newPost($entry);

    In the above example, *description* field corresponds to Entry Body
    field of MovableType. This is accessible from within your templates
    through *MTEntryBody* tag. MovableType allows you to define more entry
    properties than we did above. Following is the list of all the
    attributes we could've defined in our above "$entry":

    dateCreated
        *Authored Date* attribute of the entry. Format of the date should be
        in *ISO.8601* format

    mt_allow_comments
        Should comments be allowed for this entry

    mt_allow_pings
        should pings be allowed for this entry

    mt_convert_breaks
        Should it use "Convert Breaks" text formatter?

    mt_text_more
        Extended entry

    mt_excerpt
        Excerpt of the entry

    mt_keywords
        Keywords for the entry

    mt_tb_ping_urls
        List of track back ping urls

    Above entry is posted to your MT database. But you still don't see it in
    your weblog, do you? It's because, the entry is still not published.
    There are several ways of publishing an entry. If you pass a true value
    to "newPost()" as the second argument, it will publish your entry
    automatically:

        $mt->newPost($entry, 1);

    You can also publish your post by calling "publishPost()" method.
    "publishPost()", however, needs to know *id* of the entry to publish.
    Our above "newPost()", luckily, already returns this information, which
    we've been ignoring until now:

        my $new_id = $mt->newPost($entry);
        $mt->publishPost($new_id);

    You can also publish your post later, manually, by simply rebuilding
    your web log from within your MT control panel.

  ENTRY CATEGORIES

    *MovableType* also allows entries to be associated with specific
    category, or even with multiple categories. For example, above "$entry",
    we just published, may belong to category "Tutorials".

    Unfortunately, structure of our "$entry" doesn't have any slots for
    defining its categories. This task is performed by a separate procedure,
    "setPostCategories()".

    "setPostCategories()" expects two arguments. First should be *postid* of
    the post to assign categories to, and second argument should either be a
    name of the primary category, or a list of categories in the form of an
    arrayref. In the latter case, the first category mentioned becomes
    entry's primary category.

    For example, let's re-post our above "$entry", but this time assign it
    to "Tutorials" category:

        $new_id = $mt->newPost($entry, 0);  # <-- not publishing it yet
        $mt->setPostCategories($new_id, "Tutorials");
        $mt->publishPost($new_id);

    We could also assign a single entry to multiple categories. Say, to both
    "Tutorials" and "Daily Endeavors". But say, we want "Daily Endeavors" to
    be the primary category for this entry:

        $new_id = $mt->newPost($entry, 0);  # <-- not publishing it yet
        $mt->setPostCategories($newPid, ["Daily Endeavors", "Tutorials"]);
        $mt->publishPost($new_id);

    Notice, in above examples we made sure that "newPost()" method didn't
    publish the entry by passing it false value as the second argument. If
    we published it, we again would end up having to re-publish the entry
    after calling "setPostCategories()", thus wasting unnecessary resources.

  BROWSING ENTRIES

    Say, you want to be able to retrieve a list of entries from your web
    log. There couple of ways for doing this. If you just want titles of
    your entries, consider using "getRecentPostTitles()" method.
    "getRecentPostTitles()" returns an array of references to a hash, where
    each hashref contains fields *dateCreated*, *userid*, *postid* and
    *title*.

    "getRecentPostTitles()" accepts a single argument, denoting the number
    of recent entries to retrieve. If you don't pass any arguments, it
    defaults to *1*:

        $recentTitles = $mt->getRecentPostTitles(10);
        for my $post ( @$resentTitles ) {
            printf("[%03d] %s\n", $post->{postid}, $post->{title})
        }

    Remember, even if you don't pass any arguments to
    "getRecentPostTitles()", it still returns an array of hashrefs, but this
    array will hold only one element:

        $recentTitle = $mt->getRecentPostTitles();
        printf("[%03d] %s\n", $recentTitles->[0]->{postid}, $recentTitles->[0]->{title});

    Another way of browsing a list of entries, is through "getRecentPosts()"
    method. Use of this method is identical to above-discussed
    "getRecentPostTitles()", but this one returns a lot more information
    about each post. It can accept a single argument, denoting number of
    recent entries to retrieve.

    Elements of the returned hash are compatible with the "$entry" we
    constructed in earlier sections.

  RETREIVING A SINGLE ENTRY

    Sometimes, you may want to retrieve a specific entry from your web log.
    That's what "getPost()" method does. It accepts a single argument,
    denoting an id of the post, and returns a hashref, keys of which are
    compatible with the "$entry" we built in earlier sections (see POSTING
    NEW ENTRY):

        my $post = $mt->getPost(134);
        printf("Title: %s (%d)\n", $post->{title}, $post->{postid});
        printf("Excerpt: %s\n\n", $post->{mt_excerpt} );
        printf("BODY: \n%s\n", $post->{description});
        if ( $post->{mt_text_more} ) {
            printf("\nEXTENDED ENTRY:\n", $post->{mt_text_more} );
        }

  EDITING ENTRY

    Editing an entry means to re-post the entry. This is done almost the
    same way as the entry has been published. "editPost()" method, which is
    very similar in use to "newPost()", but accepts a *postid* denoting the
    id of the post that you are editing. Second argument should be a
    hashref, describing fields of the entry. Structure of this hashref was
    discussed in earlier sections (see POSTING NEW ENTRY):

        $mt->editPost($postid, $entry)

  DELETING ENTRY

    You can delete a specific entry from your database (and weblog) using
    "deletePost()" method. "deletePost()" accepts at least one argument,
    which is the id of the post to be deleted:

        $mt->deletePost(122);   # <-- deleting post 122

    By default entries are deleted form the database, not from your web log.
    They usually fade away once your web log is rebuilt. However, it may be
    more desirable to remove the entry both from the database and from the
    web site at the same time.

    This can be done by passing a true value as the second argument to
    "deletePost()". This ensures that your pages pertaining to the deleted
    entry are rebuilt:

        $mt->deletePost(122, 1); # <-- delet post 122, and rebuilt the web site

  UPLOADING

    With *Net::MovableType*, you can also upload files to your web site.
    Most common use of this feature is to associate an image, or some other
    downloadable file with your entries.

    *Net::MovableType* provides "upload()" method, which given a file
    contents, uploads it to your web site's archives folder. On success,
    returns the URL of the newly uploaded file.

    "upload()" method accepts either a full path to your file, or a
    reference to its contents. Second argument to upload() should be the
    file's name. If you already provided file's full path as the first
    argument, *Net::MovableType* resolves the name of the file
    automatically, if it's missing.

    If you passed the contents of the file as the first argument, you are
    required to provide the name of the file explicitly.

    Consider the following code, which uploads a logo.gif file to your web
    site:

        $url = $mt->upload('D:\images\logo.gif');

    Following example uploads the same file, but saves it as "my-log.gif",
    instead of "logo.gif":

        $url = $mt->upload('D:\images\logo.gif', 'my-logo.gif');
    
    Following example downloads a file from some remote location, using
    LWP::Simple, and uploads it to your web site with name "image.jpeg":

        use LWP::Simple;

        $content = get('http://some.dot.com/image.jpeg');
        $url = $mt->upload( \$content, 'image.jpeg' )

ERROR HANDLING
    If you noticed, we didn't even try to check if any of our remote
    procedure calls succeeded. This is to keep the examples as clean as
    possible.

    For example, consider the following call:

        $new_id = $mt->newPost($entry, 1);

    There is no guarantee that the above entry is posted, nor published. You
    username/password might be wrong, or you made a mistake while defining
    your *mt-xmlrpc* gateway? You may never know until its too late.

    That's why you should always check the return value of the methods that
    make a remote procedure call.

    All the methods return true on success, "undef" otherwise. Error message
    from the latest procedure call is available by calling "errstr()" static
    class method. Code of the error message (not always as useful) can be
    retrieved through "errcode()" static class method:

        $new_id = $mt->newPost($entry, 1);
        unless ( defined $new_id ) {
            die $mt->errstr
        }

    or just:

        $new_id = $mt->newPost($entry, 1) or die $mt->errstr;

    If you are creating your *MovableType* object with an rsd.xml file, you
    should also check the return value of "new()":

        $mt = new Net::MovableType($rsd_url);
        unless ( defined $mt ) {
            die "couldn't create MT object with $rsd_url: " . Net::MovableType->errstr
        }

TODO
    Should implement a caching mechanism

    Manual is still not complete, more methods are left to be documented
    properly

CREDITS
    Following people have contributed to the library with their suggestions
    and patches. The list may not be complete. Please help me with it.

    Atsushi Sano
        For rsd.xml and "newMediaObject()" support.

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (C) 2003, Sherzod B. Ruzmetov. All rights reserved.

    This library is a free software, and can be modified and distributed
    under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR
    Sherzod Ruzmetov <sherzodr AT cpan.org>

    http://author.handalak.com/

SEE ALSO
    the Net::Blogger manpage