How to retrieve posts from a WordPress Blog in an Android App?

Question

I'm trying to develop an Android app for browsing a Wordpress-powered blog I own. I'm trying to figure out how to retrieve posts and other information from the blog to display in the app. I've looked all over but I feel completely lost. Is this something that can be done entirely in Java/XML? If so, how?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Yes, it can be done.

One way is to use the xml-rpc api. Wordpress blogs have an xml-rpc api(which you need to enable on the Wordpress blog under "Settings - Writing"). You will also need to create a user on the blog, which you give at least read access, and for which you include the credentials in your app. From then on, you can do xml-rpc calls to your Wordpress blog(s).

If using this xml-rpc api is an option, take a look at this Java lib: http://code.google.com/p/wordpress-java/

You can get the blogposts using this lib like this:

String username = args[0];
String password = args[1];
String xmlRpcUrl = args[2];
Wordpress wp = new Wordpress(username, password, xmlRpcUrl);
List<Page> recentPosts = wp.getRecentPosts(10);

Also, the official Wordpress Android app is open source. Instructions to get it are at: http://android.wordpress.org/development/ You could use this source code as a starting point and adapt it to your needs.

Note that you can only use the xml-rpc api when you have a user with read access. If you do not have the credentials of a user with read access, you can't get the posts using the xml-rpc api. Fetching the rss feed and parsing the rss feed with some java lib would probably be your best bet then(check http://www.vogella.com/articles/RSSFeed/article.html on how to read an rss feed using Java).