Updating your Lotus Connections microblog programmatically

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This post is very techie. It comes as a reader recently asked me to share the code that I use to programmatically update my microblog (or status) in Lotus Connections. The following code is using Java and Abdera, but should be easily portable to other platforms like Adobe AIR. The Lotus Connections Profiles API documentation was helpful when I was trying to figure this out.

1. Initialize the Abdera library

   // Initialize the Atom Client to update the status in Connections Abdera abdera = new Abdera(); AbderaClient client = new AbderaClient(abdera); AbderaClient.registerTrustManager(); try { client.addCredentials("http://connections.tap.ibm.com", null, null, new UsernamePasswordCredentials(username, password)); } catch (URISyntaxException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }

2. Create the Atom entry to post to Lotus Connections
   
   
   

   Parser parser = abdera.getParser(); String urlText = "https://connections.tap.ibm.com/profiles/atom/mv/thebuzz/entry/status.do?email=" + username; // Create the Atom entry with the new status message Entry status = abdera.newEntry(); status.addCategory("http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/type", "entry", null); status.addCategory("http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/message-type", "status", null); message = StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml(message); status.setContent(message);

   
   
3. Post the Atom entry

   // Send the new status message to Connections ClientResponse response = client.put(urlText, status);

4. Check the return code

   if (response.getType() == ResponseType.SUCCESS) { // yipee System.out.println("woo hoo"); } else { // WTH? System.out.println("oh no!"); }

Hope this helps.