Can I create a generic login (Is there a generic login) to use with XML-RPC?

  • Unknown's avatar
    limefrogyank · Member ·

    I’m making a client app that will display a wordpress blog (outside of the browser) and show comments, TOC, etc. I would like to be able to use XML-RPC to get all the information rather than scrape it from the HTML. From what I can tell, the XML-RPC interface requires a wordpress login even to retrieve information.

    Is there a public username/password that can be used just to retreive information and be locked out of making any changes?

    If not, can I create a user account with the sole purpose of retreiving information from blogs via XML-RPC? I intend to make the user login with their own information if they wanted to post comments, but I would like to avoid forcing them to sign up for wordpress just to read the blog through my app. I would use SSL to encrypt the info and the “public” login information would never be revealed to the user of the app.

    Thanks
    Blog url: http://wp7wordpressapp.wordpress.com/

  • andrewspittle · Staff ·

    XML-RPC actually requires user authentication in order to access any site content. So to access the content of a blog you would need the owner of the site to authenticate the connection.

    If you’re making a client app to show content I would recommend using the RSS and Atom feeds that each site includes by default. That will let you pull content without requiring user authentication from each site owner.

  • Unknown's avatar
    limefrogyank · Member ·

    So let me get this straight… if a user of the app uses his own credentials to try and download a post via XML-RPC (like using metaWeblog.getPost), it won’t work unless he is the owner of the site? In that case, wp.newComment wouldn’t work, either?

    If true, then XML-RPC is really only useful for a blog editing app, where you have the owner’s credentials?

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    Yes, that is pretty much what XML-RPC was designed for.

    If you allowed anyone to access XML-RPC, then everyone would be able to post to your blog too.

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