Translators for blog search engines

amandafrench · July 29, 2011

I get a little tired of having every single blog post I want to cite show up as a web page by default -- sadly, not very many blogs are kind enough to install the COiNS plugin. Is there any chance someone would be able to write a translator for sites like Google Blog Search at http://www.google.com/blogsearch or IceRocket at http://icerocket.com or Technorati at http://technorati.com? I'd love to be able to go to one or more of those sites and search for blog posts and import them with all the metadata showing up correctly. Including Item Type, author, date, etcetera.

adamsmith · July 29, 2011

I think that should be possible. We'd have to work with just the information on the search page - which one would work best? Technorati seems pretty good, no?

amandafrench · July 29, 2011

I think it's the best known one, yes, although of course Google is Google. I don't usually use blog search engines, but I definitely would if it would make importing blog posts into Zotero faster.

Actually it'd probably be better to start with Google Blog Search if it's not significantly harder to code, because in that case you can do a regular Google search, then click on "More" and "Blogs" in the left column of the search results page to limit to blog posts, so that's probably easier for users to discover (and of course for ME!! ME!! ME!!) than deliberately going to Technorati.

Yay!

ajlyon · July 30, 2011

Please go to http://github.com/ajlyon/translators/raw/master/Google Blogs.js and save the file to the translators directory of your Zotero data directory (http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data).

Restart Firefox and it should start working. If this works for you, please post here so that I can submit this change to be pushed to all users.

amandafrench · September 17, 2011

Whoops, sorry I never replied to this -- fast work, ajlyon! I did try it and didn't get it to work -- I saved it to my translators directory as Google Blogs.js, restarted, did a couple of different searches at http://google.com/blogsearch, but didn't get an icon in the address bar.

ajlyon · September 17, 2011

I think there are some funny issues with Google using JavaScript for navigation, but if you refresh the page the icon should show up.

amandafrench · September 27, 2011

Sorry, still don't see it. I'm running FF 7 on a Mac.

ajlyon · September 27, 2011

Can you provide a sample URL from when you run a search? It's looking for a specific pattern, and it's possible that something is causing Google to show you a different URL and thus break the translator.

amandafrench · September 28, 2011

Sure. Here's a couple. I did notice that it's rewriting google.com/blogsearch to google.com/search?tbm=blg.

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=blg&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=671&q=aaron+swartz&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=blg&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=671&q=digital+humanities&btnG=Search

Weirdly enough, the one below works -- no idea why. Maybe because I searched from the results page?

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=blg&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=671&q=digital+humanities&btnG=Search#pq=digital+humanities&hl=en&sugexp=pfwc&cp=11&gs_id=d&xhr=t&q=digital+history&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&tbm=blg&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=digital+his&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=f&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=606b3e587879bdee&biw=1440&bih=671

Thanks, ajlyon. On the one that works, it's fantastic! Dude, can't wait to be able to import blog posts.

ajlyon · September 28, 2011

Ok-- I've identified the issue. Try installing the version here and restarting Firefox: https://raw.github.com/ajlyon/translators/master/Google Blogs.js

amandafrench · September 28, 2011

AWESOME. Works like a dream. Thanks so much.

ajlyon · September 28, 2011

Great. I just pushed this into the main translator repository, so it should be going out to all users within 24 hrs, or immediately for anyone who pushes "Update translators" in the Zotero prefs.