Technically, this is how the pieces fit together.#
I'm using the OPML file for my blogroll category on feedland.social to determine what's posted on Bluesky. When I add or remove feeds from the category, the OPML adjusts dynamically.#
I'm running a new Node app that has a websocket connection to feedland.social. It receives all the new items as they are found from all feeds over the socket. It's feedland.social's firehose. Since I'm currently the only user of that server, it's getting news from the all feeds I follow, not just the ones in the blogroll category. #
The Node app checks each new item to see if it's in one of the feeds in the OPML list. If so, it reformats it to fit in a Bluesky post and sends it to the feediverse account. #
If you're subscribed you should see the item, with a link, in your Bluesky timeline.#
The biggest problem in getting this running was rate-limiting. I have dealt with this on Twitter and other services, but Bluesky was not, for a while, letting anything through with the error message that we were over the limit. It was suggested that we should cache the accessToken rather get a new one for every message. I did that and cautiously turned the server on again at first with a 5 message per hour self-imposed limit, then gradually increased it to 10 per hour. The latest version only requires that there be at least five minutes between posts, so that means no more than 12 per hour. #
Thanks to Mark Cuban for the initial idea and his support. He saw a river of news from FeedLand and asked if it could work in Bluesky. That was the idea. I have always wanted a tight coupling between Bluesky and RSS but didn't know how to do it. We may have just skipped a step. #
We realllly could use some more formating features in Bluesky messages. This is a really strong use-case imho for the textcasting idea. #
The coolest thing from my point of view is that I already had all the pieces, fully developed, the only thing that remained was to hook them together. #
Finally, there's a this.how page for Little Feed Reader. It's purposely brief, but I have put a link to this post on that page. #
Last update: Thursday January 2, 2025; 3:19 PM EST.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)
