Table of Contents

Making requests to Bluesky

Making requests to Bluesky is done though the BlueskyAgent class. Once you authenticate using agent.Login() or via OAuth, the agent manages your "session", the tokens necessary to make authenticated requests are stored, refreshed automatically and added to any authenticated API requests.

Understanding responses from Bluesky

Almost every API call through an agent returns an AtProtoHttpResult<T>. This approach, which you may recognize from ASP.NET Core, avoids the use of exceptions should the HTTP call fail, and allows you to view any extra error information the Bluesky APIs may return.

AtProtoHttpResult<T> has properties to help you determine the success or failure of the call. These include

  • The Succeeded property, a boolean indicated whether the API call was successful or not,
  • The StatusCode property containing the HTTP status code from the API call,
  • The Result property, containing the result of the API call. This may be null if a call was unsuccessful,
  • The AtErrorDetail property, containing any detailed error messages from the API if any were returned.

If a request is successful the Succeeded property on the returned result instance will be true, the Result property will not be null, and the StatusCode property will be HttpStatusCode.OK.

If a request has failed, either at the HTTP or the API layer then the Succeeded property on the returned result will be false, and the Result property will likely be null. The StatusCode property will contain the HTTP status code that returned by API call, and, if the API call reached the API endpoint the Error property will probably contain any error message returned by the endpoint.

For example, a login call returns an AtProtoHttpResult<bool>. To check the login succeeded you would

  1. Check the that the Succeeded property is true, which indicates the underlying request returned a HttpStatusCode.OK status code, and an available result.

  2. If Succeeded is true you can continue on your way

    If Succeeded is false you use the StatusCode property to examine the HTTP status code returned by the API, then

    1. If the StatusCode property is HttpStatusCode.OK then the API call succeeded but no result was returned.
    2. If the Error property to view any extended error information returned by the API, which may have an Error and a Message set.

Let's add some basic error checking to the Hello World code you wrote in getting started.

using idunno.AtProto;
using idunno.AtProto.Repo;
using idunno.Bluesky;

using BlueskyAgent agent = new();

AtProtoHttpResult<bool> loginResult = await agent.Login("handle", "password");

if (loginResult.Succeeded)
{
    AtProtoHttpResult<CreateRecordResult> postResult = await agent.Post("Hello World from idunno.Bluesky");

    if (!postResult.Succeeded)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Post failed with HTTP Status Code {postResult.StatusCode}");
    }
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Login failed with HTTP Status Code {loginResult.StatusCode}");
    if (loginResult.AtErrorDetail is not null)
    {
        Console.Write($"API Error {loginResult.AtErrorDetail.Error} {loginResult.AtErrorDetail.Message}")
    }
}
  • Line 9 you can see a call to loginResult.Succeeded, ensuring that any attempt to post only happens if the call to Login was successful,
  • Lines 13-16 show a reaction if the call to Post() failed, and
  • Lines 19-25 show how you can check for any API errors that might be returned.
Tip

AtProtoHttpResult<T> has an EnsureSucceeded() method which will throw an AtProtoHttpRequestException if the Succeeded property is false. This can be used while testing code, or even during development before you implement error handling.

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