Update on Mobile Blogging App

Monday, January 22, 2007

Although Keith Elder recommended I put my mobile blogging app up on CodePlex, I'm going to hold off on that for a while. Here's why:

First off, I need to clean up the code before any of it goes public. It started as a prototype -- sort of a "I wonder how well this would work." As many software projects go, this "prototype" is starting to grow into a real application so I need to clean up the code a bit before I end up with a mess.

Second, I'm using Charles Cook's excellent XML-RPC.NET library to make the calls to the Metaweblog API. This got my application up and running much quicker. However, this library is a generic library for making any kind of XML-RPC call. I'm wondering if I could get a little speed improvement by writing the HTTP GET and POST's for the Metaweblog API, and parsing the XML myself. Since this is something I may investigate, I'm going to refactor the XML-RPC communication into a separate assembly so that if I make the switch, it will be contained in that one assembly and won't affect the main application.

Lastly, Codemash was all about stepping out of your comfort zone (.NET for me!) and exploring other things. To that end, I've set up a Subversion repository on my machine and my blogging app is currently maintained in there (I'll be posting a quick "How to set up Subversion" within the next day or two). At some point in the future, I'll probably place the code on CodePlex (and out of my local Subversion repository). But for now, I'd like to get some experience with Subversion.

Finally, I'm posting a few screenshots of the application. Again, this started as a prototype so this isn't very exciting! :)