help handling a Bluesky RSS feed that posts images with no text

[kylrth]

Hi, I'm looking to create a source from a Bluesky account. Let's take for example this one: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tvu3gwf5bcwti2ejjsj25om2/rss. I reference this one because it has an example similar to the actual account I'm looking to follow. Here is the RSS item for an example post containing only an image, no text:

<item>
<link>
https://bsky.app/profile/kenbar.bsky.social/post/3lxuf3ddo4s2y
</link>
<pubDate>02 Sep 2025 15:01 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">
at://did:plc:tvu3gwf5bcwti2ejjsj25om2/app.bsky.feed.post/3lxuf3ddo4s2y
</guid>
</item>

Notably, there is neither a title nor a description field. When I use my standard filters ["unseen", "includelink", "links", "digest"], I get a digest email that appears empty but actually contains links with no text, rendering them invisible.

I would like to figure out the right combination of filters to make these emails usable. At bare minimum it would be nice to just display the text of the link so that I can click on it. Any thoughts on how to accomplish this using existing filters?

[slurdge]

That's a very good question. I think this is the first time I see a RSS feed without even the title.
Your filter combination is the right one, but obviously in hindsight it will not work without a Title. What's more surprising is that you're not seeing the facebook link.
It seems also the images are broken due to the poor feed of bluesky.
bluesky-social/social-app#3384

One thing that goeland could do is that in the absence of a Title, take the link instead. However it would be harder to go beyond that, as the rss feed is really empty (which is a shame, bluesky should and can do better)

[kylrth]

Agreed, as it stands the RSS Bluesky provides is pretty garbage.

The reason I'm not seeing a Facebook link in the RSS for this item is because I selected one that had no text in the post, just an image.

In the mean time, would it be appropriate to write a fallback using the link as the title text if a title is missing? or would you prefer I not touch the main parsing behavior and instead write a filter for this?

[slurdge]

I don't mind you doing a PR on the main parsing, the patch should be small & I'll review it anyway. However I can also do it, but probably not before this week-end. I'll also update the dependencies while I'm at it....

There is a secret tool also that can help (but not much in this case): retrieve, which can retrieve the content of the link. But in this case, the facebook link will be unparseable. I could also look at other rss feed generator (open source) to see how they handle bluesky.