This post is the first of several articles about the technology around Understanding ActivityPub.
The first question I had while reading the ActivityPub specification was, “How do I find the different feeds and documents defined by the spec?”
One of the first things defined would be an actor object that refers to me. An actor object contains, my name, avatar, and paths to the different collections.
ActivityPub doesn’t define how to find an actor object for a specific user. Instead, existing networks like Mastodon use a different standard for this purpose, WebFinger.
WebFinger is a pre-defined URL that allows you to look up information about a specific resource. Here is an example on how Mastodon uses it:
If you have a user in Mastodon @andrewshell@pub.peakthink.org, you can request GET https://pub.peakthink.org/.well-known/webfinger?resource=andrewshell@pub.peakthink.org and get back a WebFinger document in json:
{
"subject": "acct:andrewshell@pub.peakthink.org",
"aliases": [
"https://pub.peakthink.org/@andrewshell",
"https://pub.peakthink.org/users/andrewshell"
],
"links": [
{
"rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
"type": "text/html",
"href": "https://pub.peakthink.org/@andrewshell"
},
{
"rel": "self",
"type": "application/activity+json",
"href": "https://pub.peakthink.org/users/andrewshell"
},
{
"rel": "http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/subscribe",
"template": "https://pub.peakthink.org/authorize_interaction?uri={uri}"
}
]
}The link defined with "rel": "self" and "type": "application/activity+json" is the URL for my ActivityPub actor object.
Another link, defined by "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page", is the URL a human should visit for this actor’s profile page.
The last link is something related to oStatus. However, that URL goes to a gambling spam site. So far, I have yet to track down precisely what I’m supposed to do with that link, but it’s clear it has to do with subscribing.
Other services can also have links in the WebFinger document. For instance, OpenID Connect uses it.
I hope this post will be a work in progress, so if you have questions or suggestions on expanding it, please contact me.