Over the past few years Tumblr has put up a good battle against other blogging platforms and still stands strong against the likes of WordPress and Blogger. Not wanting to be narrow-minded I decided to take a look into Tumblr and was actually very impressed. I don’t think I would consider using it myself (yet) but it’s clean layout and ease of use will definitely keep me checking back once in a while.

Whilst playing with the Tumblr interface I noticed they provide a pretty nifty API that allows developers to read, create, edit and delete posts from a users blog. Already being a massive fan of the PHP framework CodeIgniter, and a potential Tumblr convert, I decided to take up the challenge of writing a CodeIgniter library that easily allows these Tumblr API calls to be made through the framework. And so I give you first release…

Downloading and Installing the Library

You can download the Tumblr API library from the following location:

Download Library

View GitHub Repository

Within the ZIP there is a config file containing various authentication and display settings, and the library itself. These should be placed into ‘application/config’ and ‘application/libraries’ respectively.

Using the Library

Using the library is relatively straight-forward with most actions only taking a few lines of code. I will provide more in-depth documentation very soon but for now let’s take a look at a few examples. The Tumblr API documentation may also help a little.

Reading Posts

The tumblr.php config file in the ‘application/config’ directory:

// URL of tumblr blog.
// Replace to be the URL of the blog you want to read posts from
$config['tumblr_blog_url'] = 'http://[YOU].tumblr.com';

The tumblr.php library file in the ‘application/libraries’ directory:

// Load the library
$this->load->library('tumblr');

// Obtain an array of posts from the specified blog
// See the config file for a list of settings available
$posts = $this->tumblr->read_posts();

// Output the posts
print_r($posts);

Example output:

Array
(
   [0] => Array
   (
      [title] => This is a sample post title
      [body] => <p>And this is the body</p>
      [id] => 6010787147
      [url] => http://[YOU].tumblr.com/post/6010787147
      [url-with-slug] => http://[YOU].tumblr.com/post/6010787147/post-1
      [type] => regular
      [date-gmt] => 2011-05-30 20:41:17 GMT
      [date] => Mon, 30 May 2011 16:41:17
      [unix-timestamp] => 1306788077
      [format] => html
      [reblog-key] => Wfd5YDHP
      [slug] => post-1
   )
   [1] => Array
   (
      [title] => And another post
      [body] => <p>More lovely post content</p>
      [id] => 6011797127
      [url] => http://[YOU].tumblr.com/post/6011797127
      [url-with-slug] => http://[YOU].tumblr.com/post/6011797127/post-2
      [type] => regular
      [date-gmt] => 2011-05-29 20:43:17 GMT
      [date] => Sun, 29 May 2011 16:43:17
      [unix-timestamp] => 1306788077
      [format] => html
      [reblog-key] => Wfd4XDVP
      [slug] => post-2
   )
)

Adding New Posts

The tumblr.php config file in the ‘application/config’ directory:

// Email address and Password used to log in to Tumblr.
$config['tumblr_email'] = '[YOUR-EMAIL]';
$config['tumblr_password'] = '[YOUR-PASSWORD]';

The tumblr.php library file in the ‘application/libraries’ directory:

// Load the library
$this->load->library('tumblr');

// Add the post
$post_data = array();
$post_data['type'] = 'regular';
$post_data['title'] = 'This is a post created through the API';
$post_data['body'] = 'And this is the body';
$post_id = $this->tumblr->write_post($post_data);

// Output the newly created post ID
echo $post_id;

Editing Existing Posts

The tumblr.php config file in the ‘application/config’ directory:

// Email address and Password used to log in to Tumblr.
$config['tumblr_email'] = '[YOUR-EMAIL]';
$config['tumblr_password'] = '[YOUR-PASSWORD]';

The tumblr.php library file in the ‘application/libraries’ directory:

// Load the library
$this->load->library('tumblr');

// Add the post
$post_data = array();
$post_data['post-id'] = '6010787147'; // The ID of the post that we want to edit
$post_data['type'] = 'regular';
$post_data['title'] = 'This is an editing post updated through the API';
$post_data['body'] = 'And even an updated body';
$this->tumblr->write_post($post_data);

Deleting Posts

The tumblr.php config file in the ‘application/config’ directory:

// Email address and Password used to log in to Tumblr.
$config['tumblr_email'] = '[YOUR-EMAIL]';
$config['tumblr_password'] = '[YOUR-PASSWORD]';

The tumblr.php library file in the ‘application/libraries’ directory:

// Load the library
$this->load->library('tumblr');

// Delete the post
$this->tumblr->delete_post('6010787147');

I will be adding more examples and documentation very soon so be sure to check back. Alternatively please leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback about the library.