activity pub

If you were expecting a mastodon profile.. um. hi. I'm writing my own activitypub software.

=> updates

Feb 2nd 2023

I'm wanting to run my own activity pub server.

but I really don't want to run mastodon, or pleroma, or whatever.

so I'm writing my own bullshit.

it is quite a mess so far.

I did the usual setup-webfinger-stuff

then make an actor blob.

I derped up on that for a while and noticed I'd forgotten a / at the end of

https://thebackupbox.net/~epoch and that was breaking other people's instances silently

because I guess the self-referencing links weren't actually self-referencing

because that URL will redirect to the version with a / at the end.

I figured out how to verify HTTP Signatures in (mostly) shell-script.

=> //thebackupbox.net/~epoch/verify_signature.txt | //thebackupbox.net/~epoch/csv.txt

I made csv.c because it would have taken longer to find something that could parse

those headers with their asdf="merp",qwer="yerp" type of values... probably.

I think my next step is to make a script that can send my own signed objects,

then test them against myself.

so I don't break others stuff.

I derped up originally because I went and deleted my other fediverse accounts

before I remembered it is a pain in the butt to know whether my own stuff would work or not.

Anyway, I guess I can use this as a "I'm not on the fediverse in the old places anymore" notice

while you're here.

I made a twtxt file that I'll void-speak into.

=> /~epoch/twtxt.txt

and I'll probably be using this blog more often.

I'm on nostr too, but that place doesn't seem like a good place to talk about most things.

You can always check on my homepage for various ways of getting ahold of me... I should

probably make the gemini version prettier.

=> https://thebackupbox.net/~epoch/ | gemini://thebackupbox.net/~epoch/

the stream of consciousness has about dried up it seems. gonna shut up and throw this

at antenna.

(minor update)

TODO still for activity pub stuff:

make a script that can sign outgoing requests

make some script auto-send Accept for Follow requests

come up with a good method of keeping the user's private key on their computer

(instead of on the server)

add support for more digest algorithms. hard-coded sha-256 atm.

I at least want to be able to like/favoite posts.

collections are going to be pain

unless I come up with some nifty method of doing it.

(forgot to put links)

=> https://www.hughrundle.net/how-to-implement-remote-following-for-your-activitypub-project/

read this, was kind of not what I needed. was about ostatus instead of ap

=> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35086391/jq-how-to-iterate-through-keys-of-different-names

main helper here was the to_entries that I use to grab the key based on fragment ID from the actor json

=> https://www.zimuel.it/blog/sign-and-verify-a-file-using-openssl

read this a bit trying to figure out the incantation for openssl

=> https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/http-headers-digest/

read this to make sure the digest was actually for the POST body

=> https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#server-to-server-interactions

ofc have to link to this

=> https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/how-to-implement-a-basic-activitypub-server/

and this

there. all of my tabs are closed now.

noticed I had a bunch of tabs open in the wrong browser profile. here's them:

=> https://brandonrozek.com/blog/website-visible-on-the-fediverse/