Need an XML guru to help fix my broken blog posts!
January 3, 2015 12:19 PM

Hi, all!

I have a private blog on Blogger. They allow users to post via SMS. I was terribly lazy for a while and kept posting to it via SMS, but not being prompt about fixing the multipart posts. So now I have like 2 years' worth of old posts that I need/would like to fix. I mostly use it for historical reference, so I like to be able to go through and query old posts to check on X or Y thing. Hence the fixing! There are significant chunks of content where posts are broken out into short text-message-length separate posts. I went through and laboriously fixed about 1/3rd of them, but got fed up and stopped. It's a bit crazy-making and I'd like to be able to fix it. Is this possible for someone who has strong XML-fu?

Lastly: I know enough about command-line stuff to like, execute things, but I don't know languages well enough to write something like this myself. I have experience with Unix, Linux, DOS, a little bit of Java, some Python, and Visual Basic, but mostly for doing small tasks.

If you could write a script/something along those lines and tell me how to execute it, that would be ideal. I can download the .XML file for the blog and give you examples of what the code for the broken posts looks like.

My idea was:
*look for posts grouped by:
$message length < X
or
$number of posts within $time period

*find way to concatenate these posts

I would like to have the multiple messages combined somehow, and flag these messages with a special character or something in the title ('#' or whatever) so I can go through and continue fixing them (for things like multiple headers or whatever) as I have time.

If you are a wizard and can make it so I don't even have to go through and fix extra headers/characters/etc., I will be forever grateful/name my next pet and/or small child after you, etc. :)

I have no idea what a project like this would cost or how long it would take, so all offers will be considered! If it would need to be broken into chunks as you have time for it, and you'd be willing to accept payment for one-chunk-at-a-time, that would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

payscale: Please provide quote for service, thanks.
job type: contract
posted by cardinality to Internet Engineering

This job has been filled.

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