Publish your news articles from RSS to Bluesky with this Google Apps Script

Bluesky is an interesting competitor of X (aka Twitter) but when you go on the plateform there is not so much content, even worse in french. For my personnal needs and be able to find article I’m interested on the platform, I thought Google Apps Script could help news company to move on Bluesky. So I made an Apps Script that can publish news content from the RSS feed to Bluesky.

Automatic news published to Bluesky from RSS feed

By this way, no need to change the publication workflow just to let the script publish new articles from the RSS feed.

Pre requisite

# This article is a follow up of my previous one to publish a first message on Bluesky with API. Check this article for the setup.

Post and Get messages with Bluesky Social API and Google Apps Script

# You need a RSS Feed link :-)

# Script can run on a Google Workspace account of Gmail.com account.

Publish your article from RSS to Bluesky

No needs of complex explanation below the script :-)

const RSS_FEED = 'YOUR FEED URL'
const HANDLE='YOUR HANDLE';
const DID_URL="https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.identity.resolveHandle";
const APP_PASSWORD = "YOUR APP PASSWORD";
const API_KEY_URL= "https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.server.createSession";
const FEED_URL="https://bsky.social/xrpc/app.bsky.feed.getAuthorFeed";
const POST_FEED_URL = "https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.createRecord";
const UPLOAD_IMG_URL = "https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.uploadBlob";

function setupTrigger(){ // To be run to create trigger
  ScriptApp.newTrigger('publishFromRSS').timeBased().everyMinutes(15).create();
}

function publishFromRSS() {
  const url = RSS_FEED
  let rep = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url,{ muteHttpExceptions: true})
  if(rep.getResponseCode() != 200){
    console.log('Error : '+ rep.getContentText())
    return ;
  }
  // PropertiesService.getScriptProperties().deleteProperty('LINKS') ; // Uncomment to erase property and restart from 0
  let linkDone = JSON.parse(PropertiesService.getScriptProperties().getProperty('LINKS')) || {"items":[],"lastRun": new Date().getTime(),"init":true}
  const auth = BlueskyAuth();

  const xml = XmlService.parse(rep.getContentText());
  const root = xml.getRootElement();
  const channel = root.getChildren('channel')
  const entries = channel[0].getChildren("item");
  var newArrayLink = []
  for(var i = 0 ; i < entries.length ; i++){
    let entry = entries[i]
    let link = entry.getChild("link").getValue();
    let title =  entry.getChild("title").getValue();
    if(linkDone.items.indexOf(link)<0 ){
     
      publishNews(title,link,auth)
      
      // linkDone.items.unshift(link)
      // if(!linkDone.init){ linkDone.items.pop()}
    }
    newArrayLink.push(link)
    // return false; // Uncomment to do just one publication
  }
  if(linkDone.init){ linkDone.init = false ;}
  linkDone.lastRun = new Date().getTime();
  linkDone.items = newArrayLink;
  PropertiesService.getScriptProperties().setProperty('LINKS',JSON.stringify(linkDone))
  console.log(linkDone)
}

function publishNews(title,link,auth){
  let details = getPostDetails(link);
  let description = details.description ? details.description : title;
  title = decodeSpecialChars(title);
  description = decodeSpecialChars(description)
  let message = { "collection": "app.bsky.feed.post", "repo": auth.did, "record": 
      { "text":description, "createdAt": new Date().toISOString(), "$type": "app.bsky.feed.post",
      "embed": {
      "$type": "app.bsky.embed.external",
      "external": {
        "uri": link,
        "title":title,
        "description": description
        
      }
     } 
    }
  }
  if(details.img){
    let blob = UrlFetchApp.fetch(details.img).getBlob()
    let blobOpt = {
      'method' : 'POST',
      'headers'     : {"Authorization": "Bearer " + auth.token},
      'contentType': blob.getContentType(),
      'muteHttpExceptions': true,
      'payload' : blob.getBytes()
    };
    let res = UrlFetchApp.fetch(UPLOAD_IMG_URL,blobOpt)
    if(res.getResponseCode() == 200){
       let pic = JSON.parse(res.getContentText());
    message.record.embed.external.thumb = pic.blob
    }
  }
  let postOpt = {
    'method' : 'POST',
    'headers'     : {"Authorization": "Bearer " + auth.token},
    'contentType': 'application/json',
    'muteHttpExceptions': true,
    'payload' : JSON.stringify(message)
  };
  const postRep = UrlFetchApp.fetch(POST_FEED_URL, postOpt);
  console.log(postRep.getContentText())
}


function BlueskyAuth(){
  // 1. we resolve handle
  let handleOpt = {
  'method' : 'GET',
  };
  let handleUrl = encodeURI(DID_URL+"?handle="+HANDLE)
  const handleRep = UrlFetchApp.fetch(handleUrl, handleOpt);
  const DID = JSON.parse(handleRep.getContentText()).did
  console.log(DID)

  // 2. We get Token
  let tokenOpt = {
  'method' : 'POST',
  'contentType': 'application/json',
  'payload' : JSON.stringify({"identifier":DID,"password":APP_PASSWORD})
  };
  const tokenRep = UrlFetchApp.fetch(API_KEY_URL, tokenOpt);
  // console.log(tokenRep.getContentText())
  const TOKEN = JSON.parse(tokenRep.getContentText()).accessJwt
  console.log(TOKEN)
  return {"did":DID,"token":TOKEN};
}

function getPostDetails(url){
  let details = {}
  let rep = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url,{ muteHttpExceptions: true})
  let html= rep.getContentText();
  if(html.indexOf('property="og:image"') < 0){
    details.img = false;
  }else{
    let start = html.indexOf('content="',html.indexOf('property="og:image"')) + 'content="'.length ; 
    let end = html.indexOf('"',start)
    details.img = html.substring(start,end)
  }

  let start = html.indexOf('content="',html.indexOf('meta name="description"')) + 'content="'.length ;
  if(start >0){
    let end = html.indexOf('"',start)
    details.description = decodeHTML(html.substring(start,end))
  }else{
    details.description = false
  }
  console.log(details)
  return details;
}


function decodeHTML(txt) {
  // From answer : https://stackoverflow.com/a/4339083/3556215
  var map = {"gt":">" /* , … */};
  return txt.replace(/&(#(?:x[0-9a-f]+|\d+)|[a-z]+);?/gi, function($0, $1) {
      if ($1[0] === "#") {
          return String.fromCharCode($1[1].toLowerCase() === "x" ? parseInt($1.substr(2), 16)  : parseInt($1.substr(1), 10));
      } else {
          return map.hasOwnProperty($1) ? map[$1] : $0;
      }
  });
}

function decodeSpecialChars(text) {
  return text
    .replace(/&quot;/g, '"')
    .replace(/&amp;/g, '&')
    .replace(/&nbsp;/g, ' ')
    .replace(/&apos;/g, "'");
}

Watch points :

• Don’t forget to change APP_PASSWORD, HANDLE and RSS_FEED values to your own. For APP_PASSWORD check my previous article.
• To run manually you can run the function publishFromRSS()
• To setup trigger run the function setupTrigger()
• We store the urls treated in a Propety, if you want to restart the process from 0 uncomment the line below then comments it again :

// PropertiesService.getScriptProperties().deleteProperty('LINKS') ;

• The first run will not publish all the articles, we will store them and then we will publish new articles found in the RSS.

Github repository

You can fin this code on the repository : link.