NewsBlur: ability to sync read stories

[nvella]

Hi there! I've recently switched feed providers to NewsBlur, it seems NetNewsWire has good support!

However, whether it be for performance reasoning or otherwise, I've noticed it only syncs unread stories. Once an unread story is retrieved, it remains cached on the device and the read status of the story syncs appropriately, as expected. When I first configured NetNewsWire against the NewsBlur account I was actually under the impression that the integration was broken, as all my stories on the account were marked as read, and therefor nothing was showing in NewsBlur.

If I recall correctly (the last feed provider I used was Feedbin,) this is not the behaviour for other integrations; an amount of days of articles are synced regardless of the read status. Would it be possible to have this behaviour with NewsBlur as well? Happy to have an attempt at fixing this but a quick look at the relevant classes makes it look like the logic is quite centered around syncing unread posts; it may be difficult.

[brentsimmons]

I’m not sure I understand what you’re seeing. Say a feed has ten articles in it, and five are read. Which articles appear in NetNewsWire? Which articles appear in NewsBlur?

[nvella]

Hi Brent, many thanks for the quick response! All ten articles would appear in NewsBlur, with five marked as read. However, NNW will only show the five unread articles, regardless if 'unread only' is selected in the NNW view. The expected behaviour here would be that all ten articles also show in NNW, with the read status of the articles reflecting NewsBlur appropriately.

One thing to note: once NNW sees an article, it seems to persist to the local cache, as expected, and it's read status syncs with NewsBlur, also as expected. This means that if NNW is used as the sole means to access the NewsBlur account, then everything pretty much works OK; the articles aren't being marked as read before NNW sees them, thus NNW syncs the whole account. However, if NewsBlur on web is used to read articles before NNW is opened, then those read articles never show up in NNW, unless they are explicitly marked as Unread again so NNW pulls them down, and is able to cache them.

[cubesort]

Just wanted to add a vote for this issue as I've been quietly waiting since 2023. 😝 The fix would make my experience of NNW so much better! Thank you!