I’m trying to get more and more comfortable with node.js, and I’m finding it really handy to put together quick command line apps I might otherwise be putting way too much cruft into if I would have used PHP.

Today’s utility was one I’ve been meaning to write for a while – it uses the Tumblr API to find tumblog posts that originated from the blog owner (i.e. NOT reblogs). This can be interesting to quickly go through thousands of posts and see content that the person personally wrote themselves.

I wrote two editions. First, a simple node command line script that outputs text results to the CLI. It’s up on GitHub here, and it’s pretty quick to get up and running.

The second edition is a more complex (but accessible) web service, with the CLI edition at the core. Express exposes the CLI code as an API that an Angular app talks to (this has been my first exploration of Angular). I’m sure my Angular is horrific (still getting a feel for what concepts transfer from PHP, and which REALLY don’t…), but it’s functional, which is a good place to start. This edition is also on GitHub, and is pretty fast to get going (just replace the API key, and start the Express server).

I’ve got a live demo going (for the time being; if it’s popular, I’ll figure out something more sustainable) at this URL.

Comments, feedback, and forks welcome as always.