Got myself a personal Blogger!

One of the simple resolutions for the year 2004 was to start blogging. I have been thinking about penning my thoughts for sometime now. I did not want to join a blogging website like LiveJournal since I wanted it to be tightly integrated to my website itself and for that I had to write the blogging component as well. I was so lazy so far.

A couple of days back I sat down to write a blogger. Fortunately I suddenly had this urge to search to for any existing good bloggers that will suit my requirement. I had done this before and I never found one that is in JSP, has a good set of features and can be added to my website easily. But this time I found an open source web application known as Pebble. I was thrilled since it had all the features I was looking for and was developed in JSP. I downloaded it immediately and started experimenting with it.

But soon I found that it was made to function only as an independent java web application (not integrated with an exiting application like my website) using the security features of the servlet engine (Tomcat, Resin, etc). Since the application was already in its 1.3 release, I was hopeful that the code would be refactored and well organized so that I could make these simple changes and get it customized for my needs. Hence I downloaded the code from the CVS, compiled it and started it. I found that it had many more features than the 1.3 release version! They must be close to a 1.4 release. I was happier and I started editing code.

Soon it was clear that the application was nicely designed and implemented but was based on the assumption that it will always be executed as an independent web application! This made my job slightly more difficult but considering the features it offers this effort was expendable. I knew that I had to edit/ add test cases before I set down to make changes to the features but I hacked in the solution. Some of the features started working and some others stopped :-P

Finally after a few hours of hack, compile, run, test cycles; I have most of the basic functions and one “known bug”. Now the customized version can run from a “blog” folder in any web application without conflicting with the other servlets or filters, etc. Definitely there is a lot of refactoring possible and many setup variables should be made customizable. Anyway my blogger is ready and one of my New Year Resolutions is implemented. A nice way to start. Don’t you agree?