RSS feed issues re <enclosure> and error in <description>

[scripting]

scripting/reallysimple#17

[manton]

Adding some more of my thoughts here…

I would be happy to see RSS enclosures for the images. It could point to the cdn.bsky.app URL in the same way the Bluesky app does. There is one limitation with enclosures: there can only be one enclosure per RSS item. Another option would be to just include img tags directly in the post text as HTML.

Right now the description in Bluesky RSS feeds is plain text, but it can be HTML. HTML is probably more common in description than plain text.

You could also keep description plain text and add content:encoded as another element, like this:

<description>This is some text.</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p>This is some text.</p>
  <p><img src="…"></p>
]]></content:encoded>

The other advantage to using HTML is that it nicely solves @scripting's second point, which is that post quotes are missing. The quote text could be added as a blockquote.

[scripting]

@manton --

Here are the choices I see, obviously there could be others.

1. Use <enclosure> and include only the first image on the post. a big improvement on the current situation. simplest approach.

2. Define a new namespace or add to an existing namespace an element that behaves like <enclosure> with the difference that you can have more than one. I have a place to add it, where I add all the random elements I've needed over time and would be happy to add such an element to that namespace as say <source:enclosure>.

3. Define a new namespace or add to an existing namespace an element that is a list of enclosures.

4. As you describe, include the images in the HTML text for the <description> element and scrape the text to get the images.

5. Practically speaking some people ignore the convention of one enclosure per item. There are people who argue that the spec doesn't disallow multiple enclosures, but there was a reason for not having multiple enclosures per item, because what would you do if enclosure items have titles, or descriptions, or pubDate's or guids or whatever. In other words, it's possible to imagine RSS being used as a channel for distributing images, rather than having the image being decoration for an element that's primarily text. Both ways of viewing feeds are reasonable.

But this is a legit, different, use-case -- for an application that didn't exist when RSS 2.0 came out. it's a fact that social media systems allow attachment of multiple images to their idea of an <item> without all the extra metadata. you could foresee a time when they did want to give images titles and descriptions (alt text is kind of like a description, btw).

I think the second option is the best.

[scripting]

@jasonculverhouse -- thanks for adding enclosure.

very welcome addition, it'll make one of my apps work a with people who are uploading great political cartoons.

the great thing about it is that people can use bluesky to create flows that go to lots of other place and now we can do that with images and videos. that a huge door that's opening.

question -- do you only include the first image? if you want to generalize, we can help, as explained in the previous comment.

[jasonculverhouse]

@scripting First, not affiliated with bluesky-social

question -- do you only include the first image? if you want to generalize, we can help, as explained in the previous comment.

I could include them all.

• What does the resulting xml look like?
• What about alt text?

My test case blob has 4 images. https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/blob/844e7f598f132256f78ae4b513d0fdcd046ee0ed/bskyweb/cmd/bskyweb/testdata/atproto_embed_image_view.json

<item>
  <title>Everyday is cat day.</title>
  <link>https://bsky.app/profile/jason.mischievous.org/post/3jvkep5jn3h2b</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">at://did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/app.bsky.feed.post/3jvkep5jn3h2b</guid>
  <pubDate>Fri, 12 May 2023 17:45:03 GMT</pubDate>
  <author>Jason Culverhouse &lt;jason.mischievous.org&gt;</author>
  <description><![CDATA[Everyday is cat day.]]></description>
  <enclosure url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreihnsxgc7eizfssvpxafntdrn7k3rewex3xx2mho4k63by5ecc5u24@jpeg" type="image/jpeg" length="960975" />
  <enclosure url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreihn3unwmjwprwncki3bnslavw7fwyq2uw7e22b2f7elwbxx7pu254@jpeg" type="image/jpeg" length="956804" />
  <enclosure url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreihgvkr2oqluhe553jtftvlozpabng7tkg664lboilpfutwcifqx74@jpeg" type="image/jpeg" length="873005" />
  <enclosure url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreia5ujsgczssylpp5tr43b4s7leacbmi6bbuumzah42j667nb6fc5e@jpeg" type="image/jpeg" length="784995" />
</item>

Also there are other types of "embeds" in the protocol I just picked the 2 simplest here -> https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/lexicons/app/bsky/feed/defs.json#L16-L24

[scripting]

@jasonculverhouse --

Use Media RSS, which will allow you to have multiple enclosures.

To see how I got there, here's a ChatGPT transcript.

https://chatgpt.com/c/67f99df4-cf24-8012-bf2e-77e0904a3991

What a great tool that is to have around.

Also, we can help you get this together (@manton and I).

[jasonculverhouse]

https://chatgpt.com/c/67f99df4-cf24-8012-bf2e-77e0904a3991

[jasonculverhouse]

So now we have transitioned fromenclosure -. media:content is this correct?

<item>
  <title>Everyday is cat day.</title>
  <link>https://bsky.app/profile/jason.mischievous.org/post/3jvkep5jn3h2b</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">at://did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/app.bsky.feed.post/3jvkep5jn3h2b</guid>
  <pubDate>Fri, 12 May 2023 17:45:03 GMT</pubDate>
  <author>Jason Culverhouse &lt;jason.mischievous.org&gt;</author>
  <description><![CDATA[Everyday is cat day.]]></description>
  
  <media:content url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreihnsxgc7eizfssvpxafntdrn7k3rewex3xx2mho4k63by5ecc5u24@jpeg" 
                 type="image/jpeg" fileSize="960975">
    <media:title>Cat on a chair</media:title>
  </media:content>
  <media:content url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreihn3unwmjwprwncki3bnslavw7fwyq2uw7e22b2f7elwbxx7pu254@jpeg" 
                 type="image/jpeg" fileSize="956804">
    <media:title>Cat on a chair</media:title>
  </media:content>
  <media:content url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreihgvkr2oqluhe553jtftvlozpabng7tkg664lboilpfutwcifqx74@jpeg" 
                 type="image/jpeg" fileSize="873005">
    <media:title>Cat on a chair</media:title>
  </media:content>
  <media:content url="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:d4yzg3vadl536rkihgygkvv6/bafkreia5ujsgczssylpp5tr43b4s7leacbmi6bbuumzah42j667nb6fc5e@jpeg" 
                 type="image/jpeg" fileSize="784995">
    <media:title>Cat on a chair</media:title>
  </media:content>
</item>

[scripting]

Here are screen shots of the ChatGPT conversation.

At the end they have an example which is simpler than what you have.

I am not an expert on Media RSS, so what I suggest is let's get some other people to look at this before you ship it.

Let's not have to live with what ChatGPT suggests, sometimes they make stuff up. ;-)

Screen shots of the ChatGPT conversation

[jasonculverhouse]

I updated the PR to uses media vs enclosure

I tested a few feeds an made sure they validate against the RSS validator.

[scripting]

@jasonculverhouse -- i see you work at flipboard -- makes sense you'd want this feature. ;-)