README

php2Bluesky

A simple library that allows posting to Bluesky via the API.

Table of Contents

About The Project
- Built With
Getting Started
- Prerequisites
- Installation
Usage
Roadmap
Contributing
License
Contact
Acknowledgments

About The Project

With all the uncertainty surrounding the future of X (née Twitter), I decided to take a look at Bluesky, which somewhat ironically has its roots in Twitter, where it was started as an internal project. I worry about Bluesky's long-term, given that ultimately it too has to make money, something that Twitter has singularly failed to do. None of this, of course, affects the topic today, which is posting to Bluesky via the API.

I needed a way to post to Bluesky from PHP and so I searched for a library to help and when I couldn't find one I wrote this.

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Built With

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Getting Started

NOTE: This is for v2 of php2Bluesky. If you are looking for the v1 details you can find that here.

Running the script is very straightforward:

install composer
add the BlueskyAPI

composer.phar require cjrasmussen/bluesky-api

add php2Bluesky

composer.phar require williamsdb/php2bluesky

Now you can inspect example.php to get some examples and/or see below.

If you are interested in what is happening under the hood then read this series of blog posts.

Prerequisites

Requirements are very simple, it requires the following:

PHP (I tested on v8.1.13) - requires php-dom and php-gd
Clark Rasmussen's BlueskyApi (requires v2 or above)
a Bluesky account and an Application Password (see this blog post for details of how to do that)
ffprobe if you intend to upload videos or gifs (optional)
ffmpeg if you intend to upload videos or gifs (optional).

Read more about the requirements for video upload here.

Installation

As above

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Usage

Here's a few examples to get you started.

Note: connection to the Bluesky API is made via Clark Rasmussen's BlueskyApi which this makes a connection to Bluesky and manages tokens etc. See here for more details.

Setup and connect to Bluesky

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use williamsdb\php2bluesky\php2Bluesky;

$php2Bluesky = new php2Bluesky();

$handle = 'yourhandle.bsky.social';
$password = 'abcd-efgh-ijkl-mnop';
    
// connect to Bluesky API
$connection = $php2Bluesky->bluesky_connect($handle, $password);

Overriding the defaults

When you instantiate php2Bluesky a number of defaults are set as shown in the table below. However, you can override these as follows:

$php2Bluesky = new php2Bluesky($linkCardFallback = 'RANDOM', 
                               $failOverMaxPostSize = FALSE, 
                               $randomImageURL = 'https://picsum.photos/1024/536',
                               $fileUploadDir='/tmp',
                               $defaultLang = ['fr']);

See details below on how to set these.

Name	Default values	Explanation
$linkCardFallback	'BLANK'	What should happen if a linkcard doesn't have any associated image. Possibe values: RANDOM - a random image taken from $randomImageURL BLANK - a blank image ERROR - throw an error URL - the image at this location, URL=https://...
$failOverMaxPostSize	FALSE	Throw an error if the text is longer than the allowed length of a post.
$randomImageURL	'https://picsum.photos/1024/536'	Where to source the random image. Use with $linkCardFallback above.
$fileUploadDir	'/tmp'	Where to upload images to before posting them. Make sure that the process has permissions to write here.
$defaultLang	['en']	The default languages of posts. This must be specified as an array.

Sending text with tags

$text = "This is some text with a #hashtag.";

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky($connection, $text);
print_r($response);
if (!isset($response->error)){
    $url = $php2Bluesky->permalink_from_response($response, $handle);
    echo $url.PHP_EOL;            
}

Uploading a post with a single image and embedded url

$filename1 = 'https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Bluesky_User_Profile.png';
$text = 'Screenshot of Bluesky';
$alt = 'This is the screenshot that Wikipedia uses for their https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky entry.';

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky($connection, $text, $filename1, '', $alt);
print_r($response);
if (!isset($response->error)){
    $url = $php2Bluesky->permalink_from_response($response, $handle);
    echo $url.PHP_EOL;            
}

Uploading a post with multiple images (both local and remote)

$filename1 = 'https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Bluesky_User_Profile.png';
$filename2 = '/Users/neilthompson/Development/php2Bluesky/Screenshot1.png';
$filename3 = 'https://www.spokenlikeageek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/2024-11-18-19-28-59.png';
$filename4 = '/Users/neilthompson/Development/php2Bluesky/Screenshot2.png';
$text = 'An example of four images taken both from a local machine and remote locations with some alt tags';
    
// send multiple images with text
$imageArray = array($filename1, $filename2, $filename3, $filename4); 
$alt = array('this has an alt', 'so does this');
    
$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky($connection, $text, $imageArray, '', $alt);
print_r($response);
if (!isset($response->error)){
    $url = $php2Bluesky->permalink_from_response($response, $handle);
    echo $url.PHP_EOL;            
}

Uploading a post with a single video

$filename1 = '/path/to/local/video.mp4';
$text = 'A beautiful video';

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky($connection, $text, $filename1);
print_r($response);
if (!isset($response->error)){
    $url = $php2Bluesky->permalink_from_response($response, $handle);
    echo $url.PHP_EOL;            
}

Adding labels

Bluesky allows certain lables to be applied to posts to indicate whether they include any graphic content. There is a table below of what labels are supported but also see BlueskyConsts.php for the latest.

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky(connection: $connection, 
                                          text: $text = "this is the text of your post", 
                                          media: $media = "https://www.spokenlikeageek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SCR-20250628-jzfa.png", 
                                          link: $link = '', 
                                          alt: $alt = "Image of labels applied to a Bluesky post",
                                          labels: $labels = ["!no-unauthenticated", "porn", "sexual"]);

Label Value	UI Label	Explanation
porn	Adult	Explicit/erotic sexual content
sexual	Suggestive	Mild or suggestive sexual themes
nudity	Nudity	Non‑erotic or artistic nudity
graphic-media	Graphic Media	Violent or graphic content
!no-unauthenticated	n/a	makes the content inaccessible to logged-out users in applications which respect the label.

Setting the language

By default the language of your posts is set to English but you can override this in one of two ways. Either specify the langauge when creating the instance of php2Bluesky (see above) or pass it when posting. It must be an array even if you are passing a single language.

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky(connection: $connection, 
                                          text: $text = "Bonjour le monde!", 
                                          media: $media = "", 
                                          link: $link = "", 
                                          alt: $alt = "",
                                          labels: $labels = "",
                                          lang: $lang = ["fr"]);

It is also possible to pass multiple languages as follows:

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky(connection: $connection, 
                                          text: $text = "Bonjour le monde!".PHP_EOL."Hello World!", 
                                          media: $media = "", 
                                          link: $link = "", 
                                          alt: $alt = "",
                                          labels: $labels = ""
                                          lang: $lang = ["fr", "en-GB"]);

Getting current rate limits

Once you have a connection created, you can find out what your rate limit is, how many messages you can send, and when the rate limit resets. Use this to ensure that your messages don't get rejected.

$rates = $php2Bluesky->get_rate_limits($connection);
print_r($rates);

The above returns an array as follows:

Array
(
    [Limit] => 10
    [Remaining] => 9
    [Reset] => 1776977065
    [Reset_Human] => 2026-04-23 20:44:25
)

Setting who can reply to a post

v2.3.11 and above

With this call, you are able to set who is able to reply to a post. Unlike the other calls, you can ONLY do this after posting.

$text = "This is some text to which only @spokenlikeageek.com can reply.";

$response = $php2Bluesky->post_to_bluesky($connection, $text);

$php2Bluesky->add_restrictions($connection, $response, 'Mention');

You can send up to five allow values as an array, i.e ['mention', 'follower']

Allow Value	Explanation
mention	Anyone mentioned in the post
following	Anyone you are following
follower	Anyone who is a follower
list	Anyone in this list... NOT CURRENTLY SUPPORTED
[]	Empty array - nobody can reply

Error Codes

List of error codes and messages that are thrown by php2Bluesky.

Message	Code
BLANK specified for fallback image but blank.png is missing.	1001
Could not determine mime type of file.	1002
File type not supported: `<mime type>`	1003
Could not get the size of the image.	1004
Provided text greater than `<BlueskyConsts::MAX_POST_SIZE>`	1005
Error loading url: `<url>`	1006
No suitable image found for link card.	1007
Video duration exceeds maximum allowed duration of `<BlueskyConsts::MAX_VIDEO_DURATION>` seconds.	1009
Failed to fetch remote file: `<error>` - `<url>`	1010
No post id found.	1011
UNUSED	1012
Local file does not exist: `<filename>`	1013
Could not create image resource for resizing	1014
Unsupported label: `<label>`	1015
FFprobe failed (code `<error code>`): `<output>`	1016
Failed to parse ffprobe JSON: `<output>`	1017
Unable to determine video duration.	1018
FFmpeg not found in the local directory or globally.	1019
FFmpeg failed (code `<error code>`): `<output>`	1020
Output file missing or empty. FFmpeg output: `<output>`	1021
FFprobe not found in the local directory or globally.	1022
Unsupported Threadgate: `<allow>`	1023

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Known Issues

See the open issues for a full list of proposed features (and known issues).

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Contributing

Thanks to the follow who have provided techincal and/or financial support for the project:

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

If you have a suggestion that would make this better, please fork the repo and create a pull request. You can also simply open an issue with the tag "enhancement". Don't forget to give the project a star! Thanks again!