2022-06-12 19:20:02 -04:00
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---
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title: "Having your Website Visible on the Fediverse"
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date: 2022-06-12T18:35:30-04:00
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draft: false
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2022-11-12 11:22:54 -05:00
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tags: ["Mastodon"]
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2022-06-12 19:20:02 -04:00
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math: false
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---
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[ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/) is the backbone
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of the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse).
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Implementing this protocol will allow one to interact with users on
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[Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/),
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[Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.org/),
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[Friendica](https://friendi.ca/),
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and [others](http://fediverse.party/).
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Unfortuately for a static website, this protocol uses a
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publish-subscribe pattern. A service would need to be written
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in order to handle subscribers, pushing messages of published items,
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as well as receiving mentions.
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At the current state of my website, I am uninterested in creating
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such a service. However, I do wish to document the parts
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of the ActivityPub protocol I was able to implement so far
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using only a static website.
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This post extends off of
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[Eugen Rochko's work](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/how-to-implement-a-basic-activitypub-server/)
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which I encourage you to check out.
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## Webfinger
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When someone looks up a handle on Mastodon, it performs a Webfinger
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lookup. For example if I am looking up the user `brozek@brandonrozek.com`,
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then the service will perform a GET request at
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`https://brandonrozek.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:brozek@brandonrozek.com`.
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A webfinger request should return the handle of the user (the `subject`) as well as
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a link to its `actor`.
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```json
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{
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"subject": "acct:brozek@brandonrozek.com",
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"links": [
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{
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"rel": "self",
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"type": "application/activity+json",
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"href": "https://brandonrozek.com/brozek.json"
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}
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]
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}
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```
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Now for a static site with one user, you can hardcode the webfinger directly
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at `.well-known/webfinger`. The only issue is that many webservers determine the
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mimetype of a file by its extension. In this case, we'll have to let the webserver
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(mine is nginx) know how to serve it.
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```nginx
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location /.well-known/webfinger {
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default_type application/jrd+json;
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add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*";
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}
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```
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## Actor
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An actor defines how to interact with a user as well as its metadata.
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This file also needs to be served with the `application/jrd+json` header.
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Below is an example of what I have on my website as well as how it looks
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on Mastodon.
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```json
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{
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"@context": [
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"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
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"https://w3id.org/security/v1"
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],
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"id": "https://brandonrozek.com/brozek.json",
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"type": "Person",
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"inbox": "https://brandonrozek.com/inbox",
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"outbox": "https://granary.io/url?input=rss&output=as2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbrandonrozek.com%2Fblog%2Findex.xml",
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"preferredUsername": "brozek",
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"name": "Brandon Rozek",
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"summary": "<p>Writings from <a href='https://brandonrozek.com'>https://brandonrozek.com</p></a><p>Social profile <a href='https://fosstodon.org/@brozek'>@brozek@fosstodon.org</a></p>",
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"url": "https://brandonrozek.com",
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"manuallyApprovesFollowers": false,
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"discoverable": true,
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"published": "2022-05-17T00:00:00Z",
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"icon": {
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"type": "Image",
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"mediaType": "image/jpeg",
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"url": "https://brandonrozek.com/img/avatar.jpg"
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},
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"publicKey": {
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"id": "https://brandonrozek.com/brozek.json#main-key",
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"owner": "https://brandonrozek.com.com/brozek.json",
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"publicKeyPem": "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----...-----END PUBLIC KEY-----"
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}
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}
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```
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## Limitations and Conclusion
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Notice in the previous screenshot that it says "Cancel Follow Request".
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This is because my static website is not equipped to handle a follow request.
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Standard ActivityPub servers keep an inventory of all the users that follow
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their users and who each user on the server is following.
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The outbox defines items that the user has published.
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I have it pointed to an activity JSON feed generated directly
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from my RSS using granary.io.
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Mastodon correctly displays the number of blog posts I have,
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but sadly it does not show any of them. I'm not entirely
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sure why, though my hypothesis is that the posts need to be pushed
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to the Mastodon server when its created. It could also be that the
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actor isn't defined properly in the activity JSON feed. If you happen
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to know please get in touch.
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