Blog Creation Tool

In Short

Compared to blogging platforms like WordPress, using Git-based/Markdown for managing one’s content undoubtedly provides more control and allows for more flexible migration across platforms. However, it also increases the cognitive burden of creating a blog post. Although the hugo new command-line tool exists, managing categories and tags still requires manual editing in fontmatters.

Previously, a simple tool was attempted using the fish shell:

function blog
    cd /dest/to/blog
    set -Ux BLOG_SLUG $argv[2]

    set c $argv[1]
    argparse t/tag -- $argv
    or return

    set md (string split '"' (hugo new posts/$c/$argv[2].md) -f2)
    sed -i '' 5s/\"\"/\"$c\"/ $md
    if set -ql _flag_tag
        sed -i '' 6s/\"\"/\"$argv[3]\"/ $md
    end
    echo $md
    open $md

end

The idea was still to create articles using slugs, list existing blog post categories in advance, and complete them with the Tab key, which is more convenient than editing in frontmatters.

complete -c blog  -xa "comments  drafts  shares  stories  thoughs  thoughts  translations " -n '__fish_is_first_arg'

Recently, the blog was refactored using Astro, adding support for i18n and shortlinks. This requires modifying the existing script, but maintaining a fish script can be cumbersome. Therefore, the decision was made to refactor using a node script.

New Feature Requirements

• Interactive command-line tool
• Translating titles through online translation or using a large language model
• Automatic generation of shortlinks and slugs based on English titles
• Obtaining categories and tags from existing blog posts
• Image management

Implementation Plan

Implement an Interactive Command-line Tool

Chosen technology stack:

• Inquirer.js
• commander

inquirer is used for command-line interaction, and commander is used for parsing command-line arguments. Initially, consider two commands:

1. create: Create a blog post
2. upload: Upload images, with an option --file -f to determine whether to upload a file or a clipboard image.
3. activate: Switch to the currently edited article (similar to managing conda environments)
4. translate: Translate a specified article (TODO)

Implement Automatic Translation of Titles

After experimentation, direct translation yielded poor results. The decision was made to use openai-3.5-turbo (Azure). Based on the input title, the script will determine whether it is in Chinese or English and provide the opposite prompt for translation.

{
    "messages": [
        {
            "role": "system",
            "content": "You are a Chinese-English translation assistant. Translate the following blog post title to ${dest}."
        },
        { "role": "user", "content": "${title}" }
    ]
}

This way, regardless of whether it is a Chinese or English title, only one input is needed, and the AI handles the rest.

Implement Automatic Shortlink Generation

Considering that the number of blog posts won’t be too large, a three-character case-sensitive alphanumeric code will be used to generate shortlinks. This ensures uniqueness and keeps the shortlink reasonably short. The short-uuid package will be used to generate UUIDs, but only the first three characters will be used. If the generated ID already exists, a new one will be generated.

const chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
const translator = uuid(chars)
let id = translator.new().slice(0, 3)
while (keyExists(id)) {
    id = translator.new().slice(0, 3)
}

Shortlinks will be implemented using Vercel’s redirects. By modifying the vercel.json in the root directory and redeploying, the shortlinks will work as intended.

{
    "redirects": [{ "source": "/${id}", "destination": "/posts/${slug}" }]
}

Image Management

Instead of using existing image hosting management tools:

1. They may not perfectly fit the existing workflow.
2. File naming conventions may not align with personal preferences.

An additional step will be taken here. When generating an article, a global environment variable will be stored, allowing image management to operate under the directory generated based on the article’s slug.

• Existing image files will be saved to a specified directory and uploaded to object storage through a command.
• Clipboard images will first be saved locally using pngpaste and then uploaded to object storage.

Finally, the URL of the image will be copied to the clipboard using pbcopy, allowing it to be easily pasted into the blog post, as shown below:

blog upload test-jpeg
URL: https://static.yuhang.ch/blog/blog-creation-tool/test-jpeg.jpeg

For a screenshot in the clipboard, with this workflow, only a slug needs to be provided, and the tool takes care of uploading it to the specified directory in object storage and copying the link to the clipboard.

Conclusion

This blog post is created using this tool.