{"id":252,"date":"2008-05-11T11:49:13","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T16:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/?p=252"},"modified":"2008-05-11T12:02:19","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T17:02:19","slug":"google-blog-search-pinging-rest-client","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/?p=252","title":{"rendered":"Google Blog Search Pinging REST Client"},"content":{"rendered":"

My WordPress blog<\/a> has not been showing up in the Google Blog Search<\/a> so I decided to create a REST Client to ping it using their Google Blog Search Pinging Service API<\/a>. I created that last week and ran it a few times to test it. Tonight I was pleased to find several of my blog posts showing up in the search results. I searched on the uncommon words “YouCloud<\/em>” and “YouComment<\/em>” and found my posts listed first.<\/p>\n

I created my REST client using ASP.NET because that is my area of expertise. I could not find many examples of REST clients in ASP.NET but it is really just a matter of making a simple web request. Most developers would probably use PHP and CURL (Client URL Library Functions) which is very versatile in its ability to handle cookies, user agent strings, referrers, custom headers, and post fields. Hackers use CURL a lot because it can automate the process of sending web traffic. However ASP.NET is also capable of handling all aspects of making web requests and the Google Blog Search Pinging Service API<\/a> is pretty simple. Below is my code for pinging the Google Blog Search:<\/p>\n

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\n
   1:<\/span> Imports<\/span> System.Net<\/pre>\n
   2:<\/span> Imports<\/span> System.Xml<\/pre>\n
   3:<\/span> Imports<\/span> System.IO<\/pre>\n
   4:<\/span> Imports<\/span> System.Diagnostics<\/pre>\n
   5:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
   6:<\/span> Partial Class<\/span> GooglePinger<\/pre>\n
   7:<\/span>     Inherits<\/span> System.Web.UI.Page<\/pre>\n
   8:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
   9:<\/span>     ' create XML document as a global object<\/span><\/pre>\n
  10:<\/span>     Public<\/span> objXmlDocument As<\/span> XmlDocument = New<\/span> XmlDocument()<\/pre>\n
  11:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  12:<\/span>     Protected<\/span> Sub<\/span> btnSubmit_Click(ByVal<\/span> sender As<\/span> Object<\/span>, ByVal<\/span> e As<\/span> System.EventArgs) Handles<\/span> btnSubmit.Click<\/pre>\n
  13:<\/span>         ' Blog name<\/span><\/pre>\n
  14:<\/span>         Dim<\/span> strName = Server.HtmlEncode(\"Williamsport Web Developer Weblog\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
  15:<\/span>         ' Blog web address<\/span><\/pre>\n
  16:<\/span>         Dim<\/span> strUrl = Server.HtmlEncode(\"http:\/\/www.williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
  17:<\/span>         ' Blog RSS feed address<\/span><\/pre>\n
  18:<\/span>         Dim<\/span> strChangesURL = Server.HtmlEncode(\"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/?feed=rss2\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
  19:<\/span>         ' REST Url<\/span><\/pre>\n
  20:<\/span>         Dim<\/span> strRESTUrl As<\/span> String<\/span> = \"http:\/\/blogsearch.google.com\/ping?name=\"<\/span> & strName & \"&url=\"<\/span> & strUrl & \"&changesURL=\"<\/span> & strChangesURL<\/pre>\n
  21:<\/span>         Debug.WriteLine(strRESTUrl, \"strRESTUrl\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
  22:<\/span>         Dim<\/span> HttpSite As<\/span> Uri = New<\/span> Uri(strRESTUrl)<\/pre>\n
  23:<\/span>         ' Send web request<\/span><\/pre>\n
  24:<\/span>         Dim<\/span> objWebRequest As<\/span> HttpWebRequest = CType<\/span>(WebRequest.Create(HttpSite), HttpWebRequest)<\/pre>\n
  25:<\/span>         objWebRequest.KeepAlive = False<\/span><\/pre>\n
  26:<\/span>         objWebRequest.Timeout = 30000<\/pre>\n
  27:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  28:<\/span>         Try<\/span><\/pre>\n
  29:<\/span>             '  Get the response to the web request<\/span><\/pre>\n
  30:<\/span>             Dim<\/span> objWebResponse As<\/span> WebResponse = objWebRequest.GetResponse()<\/pre>\n
  31:<\/span>             ' Use a stream reader to read the response<\/span><\/pre>\n
  32:<\/span>             Dim<\/span> objStreamReader As<\/span> StreamReader = New<\/span> StreamReader(objWebResponse.GetResponseStream(), System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)<\/pre>\n
  33:<\/span>             lblMessage.Text = objStreamReader.ReadToEnd()<\/pre>\n
  34:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  35:<\/span>         Catch<\/span> ex As<\/span> Exception<\/pre>\n
  36:<\/span>             lblErrorMessage.Text = ex.ToString()<\/pre>\n
  37:<\/span>         End<\/span> Try<\/span><\/pre>\n
  38:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  39:<\/span>     End<\/span> Sub<\/span><\/pre>\n
  40:<\/span> End<\/span> Class<\/span><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My WordPress blog has not been showing up in the Google Blog Search so I decided to create a REST Client to ping it using their Google Blog Search Pinging Service API. I created that last week and ran it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,12,11],"tags":[19,1143,54,55,56],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamsportwebdeveloper.com\/cgi\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}