Data Portability Pack for BlogEngine.NET

By BylineJohn Dyer on

What it Does

This is an initial release of 3 extensions which will add the follow protocols to your BlogEngine.NET blog:

  • SIOC – Somewhat like RSS, but utilizes RDF to describe connections to  other sites and between users and posts (example).
  • APML – Creates an "attention profile" of your interests based on tags and categories. Each is given a value based on its frequency (example).
  • FOAF – A list of your friends, their websites, and a hashed version of their email for a unique key (example).

You can see examples of each of these by clicking on the links on the upper right of this blog. To learn more about data portability, see this post. The following links show this data in a browsable format:

How it Works

imageEach of these has a Handler, a Generator, and an Extension file. The extension files automatically add <meta> discovery files to your <head> tag.

Note: Currently, the FOAF information is stored in two different Extension files due to a limitation in BE.NET 1.3 (it cannot store both scalar and table data). One extension is for your personal information and the other is for your friends' data. BE 1.4 will allow these to be merged into one file.

Warning: BE.NET currently deletes extension data when you change *.cs files, so please backup your extension file when adding or changing extensions.

Installation and Usage

  1. Download Data Portability Pack for BlogEngine.NET
  2. Copy the *.cs files into your /App_Code/Extensions folder (you can also create a sub-directory within that folder)
  3. Add the following to your web.config file 
    	<add verb="*" path="sioc.axd" type="BlogEngine.DataPortability.SiocHandler, App_Code" validate="false"/>
	<add verb="*" path="foaf.axd" type="BlogEngine.DataPortability.FoafHandler, App_Code" validate="false"/>
	<add verb="*" path="apml.axd" type="BlogEngine.DataPortability.ApmlHandler, App_Code" validate="false"/>
  4. Go to your Admin->Extensions page and you should see 4 extensions prefixed with "DP_". The FoafFriends and MyProfile extensions need data entered, the other ones you can just leave as their defaults.
    image
  5. Optionally, you can add links to each of these files (as I have on the upper right)

Future Work

  • Merge FOAF extensions for BE 1.4
  • Possibly store FOAF data in a separate file rather than as Extension data
  • Add additional settings to APML such as parsing blog roll
  • If you also add OpenID support to your blog, then you will have everything that is currently on the data portability standards list.

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26 thoughts on “Data Portability Pack for BlogEngine.NET”

  3. This is so cool. I appreciate it and am now using it. However, with the download you provide the DP_foaf.cs file has a double entry which causes a BE.N 1.3 site to fail. I had to comment out one of the lines and all works well from what I can tell. The error said there were two "foaf" controls, yada yada.
    BlogEngine.Core.Post.Serving += new EventHandler<ServingEventArgs>(Post_Serving);
    //BlogEngine.Core.Page.Serving += new EventHandler<ServingEventArgs>(Post_Serving);

  9. You can delete this comment.
    1) You comment box is blowing out the page in Ie7, it extends beyond the right edge of your main table.
    2) Images are broken when browsing via the SIOC browser,
    http://sparql.captsolo.net/browser/browser.py?url=http%253A%2F%2Fjohndyer.name%2Fsioc.axd%253Fsioc_type%253Dpost%2526sioc_id%253D69be6175-0700-4143-9082-278d11ce77b8
    You may want to consider hardcoding the absolute uri instead of the relative path.
    Great Job btw!!

  20. Hey John,
    Okay not to sound stupid or anything but, don’t you think SIOC sucks compared to RSS why would anyone even use SIOC when RSS is totally Mainstream even to those computer illiterate users.

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  24. This is so cool. I appreciate it and am now using it. However, with the download you provide the DP_foaf.cs file has a double entry which causes a BE.N 1.3 site to fail. I had to comment out one of the lines and all works well from what I can tell. The error said there were two "foaf" controls, yada yada.

  25. This is so cool. I appreciate it and am now using it. However, with the download you provide the DP_foaf.cs file has a double entry which causes a BE.N 1.3 site to fail. I had to comment out one of the lines and all works well from what I can tell. The error said there were two “foaf” controls, yada yada.

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