How to interface from Ruby to WordPress?

WordPress offers different interfaces, and Ruby can access all of them. There are several scripts out there for these, but no "perfect one" yet. They are all in different stages of maturity and age, and none of them seems actively maintained. So, choose according to your personal needs and preferences:

WordPress WXR interface

I would propose you look through this list, ordered by my evaluation of the script's general quality, and choose the first that fits your needs:

  • translatour. A tool dedicated to make WordPress WXR files accessible in Ruby.
  • wp-import-dsl. A Ruby domain-specific language (DSL) to import WordPress WXR files to anything else. However, this seems not to be the best choice if you just want to do a few little changes to the WXR files, as you have to write the complete output rendering yourself. Last update 2011-06.
  • wordpress_import. A minimalist parser for WordPress WXR files, done in Ruby. Filters out junk tags and can be used as a library.
  • wordpress_to_word_to_ebook. x-ian's tiny script to convert a WXR file into a single HTML page. From there, you can follow the instructions on his blog to create an e-book from your WordPress posts, if desired. Uses nokogiri.
  • WordPress WXR to Postmarkdown. Snippets to create a script that can convert a WordPress WXR file into posts for the Postmarkdown gem, using Markdown markup. Quite elegant approach, using the Nokogiri and Upmark gems.
  • wxr_export.rb. A script to output WXR files, using the XML::Builder Ruby gem. It's a bit special because this WXR file is meant to only contain comments and be imported into the Disqus cloud-based comment system.
  • Typo Export to WordPress. Short Ruby on Rails script that can convert content from the Typo blogging system to WordPress.
  • wordpress2blogger.rb. Short Ruby on Rails script that can convert a WordPress WXR file to the XML file format expected for importing into the blogger.com platform. From 2008-04.
  • wordpress_importer. evan's script that can import a "homegrown blog" and convert its content into a WordPress WXR file. Last commit 2010-12.
  • refinerycms-wordpress-import. Script to convert a WordPress WXR file into content for the Refinery CMS. Contains a nice gem for that task, that could be converted to do a different conversion task as well.
  • hackWXR.rb. A tiny script to enclose some tag contents in WordPress WXR files into CDATA tags to prevent them from (slow) XML parsing when handling large WXR files with Ruby code. See also the author's related blog post.
  • splitWXR.rb. A Ruby tool to split a big WXR file into smaller pieces, to avoid errors when importing into WordPress. See also the author's related blog post. There's also a version including a graphical interface: SplitWXR.

WordPress XMLRPC interface

You can also interface with its XMLRPC interface. Alternatives, the most recommendable first:

  • WordPressto. A Ruby gem to access the WordPress XMLRPC interface. (This is an actively developed fork of the original johnl/Wordpressto, which was last updated 2010-09.)
  • wp_rpc. Appears like another fork of WordPressto, last updated 2012-10 (as of 2013-03).

WordPress JSON interface

WordPress can provide a JSON interface by using the JSON-API plugin for WordPress. Then, you can interface with this from Ruby by using:

WordPress REST API

You can use these Ruby tools to interface with the wordpress.com REST API:

WordPress database access

Still another way is to interface directly with the MySQL database of WordPress. Alternatives:

  • WP-Ruby. Tools to map Ruby objects to the WordPress database structure. Last updated 2010-07.

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