Blogger Beta Backup tool

Finally i found time to prepare solution to backup my blog. I've decided to do that as I had problems to backup my blog using available tools. To archive that I use Blogger Beta Atom feeds, few tables in Oracle, and PL/SQL package to read blog posts, parse them using XML DB features and store in DB tables.

Requirements

• Oracle 10g (tested on Oracle XE on Windows and Oracle Enterprise 10.2.0.2 on Windows). Oracle9i should work also, but it's not tested.
• Blogs maintained by Beta Blogger and hosted on blogspot.com. You must allow to publish full content of your posts and comments.
• Direct connection to Internet

Installation

1. Download installation package
2. Create new Oracle schema and grant to it:
   1. roles CONNECT and RESOURCE
   2. EXECUTE on SYS.UTL_HTTP
3. run script install.sql

Usage

First You have to register blog you want to backup. Use BLOGSPOT_BACKUP.register_blog function:

begin
 dbms_output.put_line(
 BLOGSPOT_BACKUP.register_blog
 ('Software Engineer Thoughts', 'http://pbarut.blogspot.com/'));
 commit;
end;

To download all your posts with comments andl labels use this PL/SQL block:

begin 
 BLOGSPOT_BACKUP.synchronize_blog(null, false); 
 BLOGSPOT_BACKUP.synchronize_labels(null, null); 
 BLOGSPOT_BACKUP.synchronize_comments(null, null, false); 
 commit; 
end;

For more information take a look into BLOGSPOT_BACKUP specification.

Data storage

Table name	Desription
BLOGS	Blogs registered for backup.
BLOG_POSTS	Blog posts downloaded.
BLOG_LABELS	Labels associated to blog posts.
BLOG_COMMENTS	Comments related to blog posts.
FEED_CACHE	Used speed up tests. In tests phase feeds are read from this table instead of downloading every time.

End notes

I'm publishing this tool, as some of you might find it useful. It should work on all beta blogger blogs, but I do not give ant warranty. In case of any problems fill free to contact me.

Regards, Paweł