Question thread #110

[pauamma]

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Comments

[lethargic_man]

Might somebody be able to help me with jbackup.pl? It no longer works for me. When I run it on my blog, it complains:

[...]
do_flush: flushing database
do_sync: got 15 items.
xmlrpc_call_helper: LJ.XMLRPC.getchallenge
xmlrpc_call_helper: LJ.XMLRPC.sessiongenerate
do_authed_fetch: mode = comment_meta, startid = 1, numitems = 10000, sess = v1:u238292:s206:a6PLreb5gEx//

mismatched tag at line 63, column 2, byte 2757 at /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/perl5/5.22/XML/Parser.pm line 187.

I tried downloading the latest version, but it didn't fix the problem.

A little debug shows that the content that Parser.pm is barfing on is the DW homepage as seen by someone not logged in.

FWIW, the last time I ran the script successfully was 15 January 2017, so whatever broke it is likely to derive from a change between then and when I opened a support request on 31 July 2018.

FWIW, I'm running Perl 5.26.1 (or 5.30.2 or 5.34.1)

[alierak]

I don't think we're actively maintaining jbackup.pl, but I have a couple of suggestions. One, are you supplying the script with your actual password? That will no longer work, see this post for the workaround for xmlrpc clients like jbackup.pl. And two, the script appears to assume plain HTTP for everything, but we've been all-HTTPS for several years. Maybe changing all the http:// URLs to https:// in jbackup.pl would fix some issue related to secure cookies.

[lethargic_man]

I don't think we're actively maintaining jbackup.pl

In which case, what is the recommended alternative?

the script appears to assume plain HTTP for everything, but we've been all-HTTPS for several years. Maybe changing all the http:// URLs to https:// in jbackup.pl would fix some issue related to secure cookies.

Yay, that worked; now I finally have the first full backup of my blog in five years. Thanks muchly for the pointer in the right direction.

[pauamma]

If it's no longer being maintained (whether deliberate decision or lack of resources to), maybe hand it over officially to someone who can and remove it from the DW repo?

[deducingontheroof]

I've got a feeling the answer might just be something along the lines of "you can't," but I've got a question about the XMLRPC API and crawling comments on a community.

I've been piecing together different docs and old questions and answers and I've managed to figure it out for most of what I'm trying to do, but I've hit a wall and can't figure out how to progress (or if it's even possible with this API).

I'm getting the url of the entry using the jitemid from export_comments and the getevents method, and I'm getting the comment id from export_comments - but is there any way to get the url of the comment?

Thanks in advance!

[pauamma]

Off the top of my head, and you should check, but comment id << 256 | entry anum will give you the comment number to use in a URL (eg, 1804712 for the comment I'm replying to).