Generate Octopress posts from Posterous XML

posterous-octopress.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'xmlsimple'
require 'active_support/inflector'
require 'yaml'
require 'json'
require 'fileutils'
require 'date'

class Post
  def initialize(post)
    @post         = post
  end

  def write(dir)
    filename = File.join(dir, "#{slug}.md")
    puts "Writing #{filename}"

    File.open(filename, 'w') do |f|
      f.write frontmatter
      f.write "\n\n"
      f.write content
    end
  end

  private
  def content
    @post['body'].first.strip
  end

  def title
    @post['title'].first
  end

  def slug
    date + '-' + title.downcase.parameterize
  end

  def date
    d = Date.parse @post['date'].first
    d.strftime '%Y-%m-%d'
  end

  def tags
    return '' unless @post['tag']
    @post['tag'].join(', ')
  end

  def frontmatter
    [ {
      'layout'      =>  'post',
      'date'        =>  date,
      'title'       =>  title,
      'comments'    =>  true,
      'categories'  =>  tags
    }.to_yaml, '---' ].join("")
  end
end

posts = XmlSimple.xml_in('posterous.xml')['post']
dir = File.join('source', '_posts')
FileUtils.mkdir_p dir unless File.exists? dir

posts.each do |post|
  p = Post.new post
  p.write(File.join('tmp', 'posts'))
end

I used http://www.backuperous.com/ to generate a backup, tweaked the XML it returned a tiny bit by giving it a single root node with post nodes as its children, and then ran the above.

hey there, thank you so much for sharing this. Do I create this file (posterous-octopress.rb) and put this inside my plugin folder?

Can't see the file included from your repo here (https://github.com/rmurphey/blog-octopress/tree/master/plugins)

I am a novice around web dev but I believe in learning by doing. I hope I figure it out before you reply, but it'll be very helpful if you could point me out. Thanks again!

I just put it in the root of my octopress repo, along with the posterous.xml file, and then executed it with ./posterous.rb. Note that you'll also need to do chmod 755 posterous.rb in order to make the file executable. Note too that I had to fiddle with the XML that I got from backuperous.com in order to make it well-formed.

Hi, thanks for the rescue! I was still on it and can't find how to work it.

I'll go through and update/report any unexpected findings. I believe it should work right out of the box.

Thanks again!

Like you suggested, it required some adjustments on the XML file and I made some changes on the posterous.rb in order to make it worked (I had no clue what and how I did it though).

Again, thanks so much for this! Made my day.