Very satisfied and happy after publicly sharing latest version blogbooks of my Blogger blogs, main parts of which (blogbooks) were generated by my VBA programs

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Last updated on 9 Aug. 2023

I have 3 main blogs which I have updated (posted to) in the past months and years. All these 3 main blogs are on Blogger. There is one more blog (on Wordpress) to which I have posted in recent months and years, but that is a miscelleneous tech. blog and my posts there are not so important, IMHO. 

The 3 main blogs I mentioned above are:

1) My spiritual blog - https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/ - has slightly over 1400 posts & pages

2) My worldly blog - https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/ - has slightly over 1000 posts & pages

3) My blog on my great-grandfather (TNS) - https://tnarayanasasthri.blogspot.com/ - has slightly over 20 posts & pages

I also have a 4th blog on Blogger - https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/ - but I have not changed its data for some years now. 

The blogs can be viewed by all (free of any charge) on the Internet. But the blog shows a list of a few posts at a time out of which one post can be viewed in full by clicking on it in the list. If somebody wants to be able to browse through all posts of the blog or go through say one year's blog posts, it is very cumbersome to do such viewing on the blog as one has to do a lot of mouse-click navigation to go from one post to another for a large set of posts.

This is where a blogbook document in HTML or PDF which has all posts of the blog, or a large set of posts of the blog, becomes very useful. But unfortunately, though I searched for them on the Internet quite a lot, I could not find any free programs available as of now to create a blog book out of a large blog. For small blogs with all posts put up within 3 years, the free version of a program like BlogBooker, https://blogbooker.com/ , can do a partial job by creating year wise blogbooks. But if the blog is large and covering more than 3 years, and there are many blogs whose blogbooks have to be made, BlogBooker's free version limits is a big problem. In the past, there was another free program available, http://blog2book.pothi.com/app/ , but that's not available any more.

It was quite frustrating that I could not create the blogbooks that I wanted. I had to use workarounds to create yearly blogbooks of recent years and also use my older blogbooks for earlier years. This approach would miss out on updates done on old posts of my blogs as the older blogbooks would not have the updated post content.

Around a year back, the author of "bloggerToEbook" project shared under MIT license here: https://github.com/hn-88/bloggerToEbook , had kindly informed me of this software which does a similar task using RSS feed of a blog. Here's a related blog post of the author:  https://hnsws.blogspot.com/2022/03/google-apps-script-to-turn-blog-posts_6.html . But I had not got around to reading up on Google Apps Script and his code to figure out how to use it for my needs. In end June 2023, I felt it was appropriate to invest the time to understand how to use his code. I thank the above author for sharing his program with me which led me to consider doing something similar to meet my needs.

I was fascinated by that program which uses RSS feed to get a blog's posts, and tried it out on my own Blogger blogs after making suitable changes. I also started adding some more features to the Google Apps Script program. But as my blogs were of large size, the execution limitations for free users (like me) of Google Apps Script were creating issues for me. I also wanted comments of my blog to be included in the blog books and placed after the posts in which the comments were made, which feature was not provided in the above program. The program also does not retrieve pages of the blog but I later found out that it was quite simple to modify the program to retrieve pages from a blogger blog (using RSS).

I later moved to Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) platform as it was already set up on my PC with Microsoft Office. I have put up a series of blog posts on this work I did (both kinds of work - Google Apps Script work and VBA work), starting with this post: Google Apps Script to Create Blogger Blog Book (or Book parts): Test Versions and Stable Version, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2023/06/google-apps-script-to-create-blogger.html, published on 28th June 2023.

I faced a lot of stumbling blocks as I did this programming. I was totally out-of-touch. I had not done any similar scale (or bigger scale) programming work for at least 12 years, if not 20 years. [I think I last worked on non-trivial real-life programs like this with me being a consultant guiding programmers, in my software industry work life, the last month of which was August 2002. Later in end 2002, I did write a small program as free service activity but that, if I recall correctly, was relatively small size and did not have the many challenges that I faced with this program. Even if I take the end 2002 programming work into account, I think it was after a break of 20 years (20.5 years to be more precise) that I got into developing a non-trivial real-life program (as against test programs I wrote when I was offering free service of teaching software development in a deemed university from 2003 to 2011-12).]

My health issues since January 2022, were creating problems for sustained typing on computer keyboard work that had to be done for this programming. Further, my mental stamina for sustained analysis and bug fixing was also lesser now due to the health issues. Also I had no idea about reading XML or JSON documents which was needed as they (XML backup file or JSON RSS feed) were the primary input data sources for the program.

But I decided to view this work as a mission. Why did I do that? Well, my social media writing (or blogging) work which started in a significant way from around 2011, was my main public activity since 2011. As a blogger or social media writer, I had two tasks - one was writing the posts and responding to any comments on the post, and the second was acting as a self-publisher. By making a blogbook and sharing it publicly, I made it significantly easier for deeply interested persons in the blog to be able to view all or large number of posts easily in one document. From a public activity perspective, I felt that it should not stop at only publishing the posts but also at making my writings more conveniently accessible to interested readers through such blogbooks. So creating these blogbooks were important. And as the old programs I had used in the past for it, were not delivering what I needed, and since I had been a software developer decades ago, I felt it was right for me to invest the time and effort to try to do programming which will help create these blogbooks.

I learned to some extent, and need to learn more, about how to read my body's stop work signs when it gets strained, take it easy for some time and after the body is sufficiently rested, re-start the work.

Eventually the main part of the work got done after over a month. On 1st and 2nd August, I created the blogbooks for all four of my Blogger blogs by first running the programs I wrote [Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programs/macros BlogExportFileToBook and SplitBlogBook] using the blogs' backup/export XML files as data input source, and then doing some finishing touches by hand (manually).

The file: 20230802-03-FinishingTouchesHTMLEditing.txt,  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lUbqnzBVSfXN6YnrB8D0vD9-eHcvmrTh/view?usp=drive_link , captures these "finishing touches" work done manually.

Additional information about some of these "finishing touches" is provided in the following:

The final blogbooks created are as follows (first some notes are given which are followed by the blogbooks details):

[Please note:

1) On Google Drive, HTML file is rendered as text file in the preview. To view it as rendered HTML, the file has to be downloaded to PC/device and then opened in a browser.

...

Please note:

1) On Google Drive, PDF file preview shows the document but internal links do not work. Download file to PC and then view locally in browser or PDF reader to use internal links (I use free Foxit Reader 9.7 which supports Alt + Back Arrow to go back to point where internal link was clicked).

2) PDF files have been generated by opening above HTML files in Chrome browser and using Print -> Save As PDF in it. PDF files above 600 pages have been printed in parts due to which some Contents Links (all in 1st part) do not work. At times, the PDF generated in this manner by Chrome does not show some images and instead shows a placeholder which is linked to the image on the blog. Clicking on the placeholder leads to the image being shown in a browser tab, if the image link is not broken.]

1) Spiritual blog: https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/  

Download blogbook page: https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/p/consolidated-blog-content-document.html 

HTML blog books: 

Total size of HTML files: 16.3 MB (UTF-8 UNICODE characters).

PDF blog books: 

  • Blog book Part 1 of 3. 3 PDF files of total 1750 pages:

  1. Pages 1 to 600 (33.4 MB):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/13BpY8w1mJRHnCI23VIFbQ5iY_3ERgto2/view?usp=drive_link
  2. Pages 601 to 1200 (22.6 MB):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nBlbtiT4ZFaZRPgl92E93WbpiLuVIZSl/view?usp=drive_link 
  3. Pages 1201 to 1750 (21.8 MB):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/15ur0_ct6eSJs4wau6Mx_6_k76MWyzl34/view?usp=drive_link

  • Blog book Part 2 of 3. 2 PDF files of total 1098 pages:

  1. Pages 1 to 600 (19.9 MB):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CD3XFadb151ak2ylYU3HirujqJ4N18X0/view?usp=drive_link
  2. Pages 601 to 1098 (17.3 MB):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MWAck3eNngW1f4FvIxQPtMHZOP-6Fkmp/view?usp=drive_link

Total number of pages and size of PDF files: 3393 pages, 138.6 MB

2) Worldly blog: https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/ 

Download blogbook page: https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/p/all-blog-contents-all-in-one-doc-last.html

HTML blog books: 

Total size of HTML files: 10.8 MB (UTF-8 UNICODE characters).

PDF blog books: 

  • Blog book Part 1 of 2 as 3 PDF files of total 1717 pages:

  1. Pages 1 to 600 (26.5 MB): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a0gSu15P3lpF2oce-dHLSD6qV6s85KWc/view?usp=drive_link
  2. Pages 601 to 1200 (5.6 MB): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sUS5hb1Jl86Y-2o7oJIloq3e-YXgmrD7/view?usp=drive_link
  3. Pages 1201 to 1717 (12.2 MB):    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EtV7l5Za6DZZrWRByXl7m1RDH6jtqLiP/view?usp=drive_link

Total number of pages and size of PDF files: 2392 pages, 71.1 MB

3) TNS (my great-grandfather) blog: https://tnarayanasasthri.blogspot.com/ 

Download blogbook page: https://tnarayanasasthri.blogspot.com/p/download-blogbook.html

HTML blog book as HTML file (497 KB, UTF-8 UNICODE characters):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/11KKkYhZGve7oVDPcGPI453YOZXeUuzP-/view?usp=drive_link

PDF blog book: 

PDF version of the blog book (6.7 MB, 139 pages):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EkuxXUzxqXJgycUw-yQrOgSVq49gi7l2/view?usp=drive_link


4) Indian CS & IT Academic Reform (Past) Activism blog: https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/

Download blogbook page: https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/p/consolidated-blog-content-document-all.html

HTML blog book: 

Latest HTML blog book with content as of 1st Aug. 2023, HTML file (2.2 MB, UTF-8 UNICODE characters):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CT7NiVNQcmGCX1CEstcXWKTT_1V2uVgG/view?usp=drive_link 

PDF blog book: 

PDF version of the blog book (24.7 MB, 670 pages):  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXq_c8iKGQ7mYoFIvGoaX2lqpe4SoGV/view?usp=drive_link

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Note that some of the content in above blogs are from other sources like wikipedia. My content size perhaps is around 50 percent of above mentioned content size.

I now am feeling very happy and satisfied that I have made the above writings of mine easily accessible as updated blog books. Note that some other blogs of mine have not changed much or not changed at all and so their blogbooks need not be updated.

Also, I have publicly shared the programs I wrote. So others can also use it if they want, after making suitable code modifications. 

The main part of these blogbooks were created using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programs/macros BlogExportFileToBook and SplitBlogBook that I wrote. The following blog posts provide more details about these macros:

1. BlogExportFileToBook: VBA code to produce HTML blog book from Blogger blog backup/export XML file, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2023/07/BlogExportFileToBook-vba-code.html .

2. SplitBlogBook: VBA code to split HTML blog book into smaller HTML files and Generate Contents Internal Links, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2023/07/splitblogbook-vba-code-to-split-html.html .

There is some further work that I plan to do in this regard but those are extras. The main work of producing the blogbooks is done. As an example of the extras work, I think it would be nice to create blogbooks having posts & pages that match a search criteria. So if somebody wanted to read all posts  & pages of my spiritual blog having the word 'meditation' in it, he/she could create a blogbook having only such posts & pages, using a program that I plan to hopefully provide and my blog's backup/export data (XML) which I publicly share on Google Drive.

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