UrsaProxy

A Bearblog-to-Gemini proxy built with Xitzin. It fetches content from a Bearblog RSS feed and HTML pages, converts them to Gemtext format, and serves them over the Gemini protocol.

Features

• Proxies Bearblog content to Gemini protocol
• Converts HTML to Gemtext via Markdown intermediate format
• Generates Atom feeds with Gemini URLs
• Configurable TTL caching for feed and post data
• Support for static pages not in RSS feed

Installation

Requires Python 3.13+.

# Using uv
uv add ursaproxy

# Using pip
pip install ursaproxy

Configuration

UrsaProxy can be configured via a TOML file or environment variables.

TOML Configuration (Recommended)

Create an ursaproxy.toml file in your working directory:

bearblog_url = "https://example.bearblog.dev"
blog_name = "My Gemini Blog"
cert_file = "/path/to/cert.pem"
key_file = "/path/to/key.pem"

# Optional settings
gemini_host = "gemini.example.com"
cache_ttl_feed = 300
cache_ttl_post = 1800
host = "localhost"
port = 1965

[pages]
about = "About Me"
now = "What I am doing now"

Environment Variables

Environment variables override TOML settings:

Variable	Required	Default	Description
BEARBLOG_URL	Yes	-	The Bearblog URL to proxy
BLOG_NAME	Yes	-	Display name for the blog
CERT_FILE	No	None	Path to TLS certificate file
KEY_FILE	No	None	Path to TLS private key file
PAGES	No	{}	JSON dict of static pages
GEMINI_HOST	No	None	Hostname for Gemini URLs in feed
CACHE_TTL_FEED	No	300	Feed cache TTL in seconds
CACHE_TTL_POST	No	1800	Post cache TTL in seconds
HOST	No	localhost	Server bind address
PORT	No	1965	Server port

Configuration Priority

Settings are loaded in this order (highest to lowest priority):

1. Environment variables
2. ursaproxy.toml file
3. Default values

Usage

Standalone

ursaproxy

The server will start on gemini://localhost:1965/ by default.

As a Library

UrsaProxy can be embedded in other Xitzin applications for virtual hosting:

from ursaproxy import create_app, Settings

# Create settings programmatically
settings = Settings(
    bearblog_url="https://myblog.bearblog.dev",
    blog_name="My Blog",
)

# Create the app
app = create_app(settings)

# Mount in your main Xitzin app or run directly
app.run(certfile="cert.pem", keyfile="key.pem")

Or load settings from TOML/environment:

from ursaproxy import create_app, load_settings

app = create_app(load_settings())

Routes

Route	Description
/	Landing page with recent posts and page links
/post/{slug}	Individual blog post with date
/page/{slug}	Static page (without date)
/about	About page from feed metadata
/feed	Atom feed with Gemini URLs

Development

For contributing, clone the repository and install with dev dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/alanbato/ursaproxy.git
cd ursaproxy
uv sync --group dev --group test

Commands

# Run linting
uv run ruff check .

# Run linting with auto-fix
uv run ruff check --fix .

# Format code
uv run ruff format .

# Type check
uv run ty check

# Run all pre-commit hooks
uv run pre-commit run --all-files

# Run tests
uv run pytest

# Run tests with verbose output
uv run pytest -v

Project Structure

src/ursaproxy/
├── __init__.py      # Xitzin app, routes, and entry point
├── config.py        # Pydantic settings for environment config
├── fetcher.py       # HTTP client for fetching Bearblog content
├── converter.py     # HTML -> Markdown -> Gemtext pipeline
├── cache.py         # Simple TTL cache implementation
└── templates/       # Jinja2 templates
    ├── index.gmi    # Landing page template
    ├── post.gmi     # Post/page template
    ├── about.gmi    # About page template
    └── feed.xml     # Atom feed template

Testing

The test suite uses pytest with fixtures for offline testing:

# Run all tests
uv run pytest

# Run specific test file
uv run pytest tests/test_converter.py

# Run with coverage (if installed)
uv run pytest --cov=ursaproxy

HTTP requests are mocked using respx, so tests run completely offline.

How It Works

1. Feed Fetching: Fetches RSS feed from {BEARBLOG_URL}/feed/?type=rss
2. HTML Fetching: Fetches individual pages from {BEARBLOG_URL}/{slug}/
3. Conversion Pipeline:
   • Parse HTML with BeautifulSoup
   • Extract content from <main> element
   • Remove nav, footer, scripts, styles
   • Convert to Markdown with markdownify
   • Convert to Gemtext with md2gemini
4. Caching: Feed and posts are cached with configurable TTLs
5. Serving: Content served via Gemini protocol using Xitzin

License

MIT