OK gang! I now have an *extremely* basic ActivityPub...

OK gang! I now have an *extremely* basic ActivityPub server which can send messages to its follower!

Next steps:

* Record who is following it.
* Post to all followers (not just me).
* Stable URl for posts.
* Front end for picking locations nearby.
* About a dozen other things!

Screenshot of a Mastodon post. It is of my location account and says "Hello, world!"

Like 28 January at 11:48 | Open on mastodon.social

28 comments

DELETED

@Edent This is neat! I was thinking about a video game version of BookWyrm recently to replace backloggery.

28 January at 11:55 | Open on mastodon.org.uk

James 🌈💜

@Edent Nicely done! Over that first major hurdle.

28 January at 11:55 | Open on mastodon.social

Alaric Snell-Pym

@Edent is this best done as a whole new server - creating a separate account to your "main" one for others to follow? I mean, I am sure it *has* to be because you can't just ask your existing account to publish arbitrary post metadata your client generates, or can't extend your existing client, but should clients/servers be more extensible to allow such experiments? I mean, it's not too hard to extend email like that.

28 January at 12:08 | Open on fosstodon.org

Terence Eden

@kitten_tech
In an ideal world, my main Mastodon account would let me attach location metadata much like Twitter does.
But, because it doesn't, I'm writing my own server.
It is just me scratching my own itch and proving it can be done.

28 January at 12:10 | Open on mastodon.social

Alaric Snell-Pym

@Edent yeah! Don't worry, I'm not saying you're doing it wrong, just that this points to a lack of extensibility in the existing things, forcing you to build a load of duplicate infra to support.your use case 😥

28 January at 12:25 | Open on fosstodon.org

Matthew Exon

@kitten_tech @Edent This is a correct me if I'm wrong thing, but... my understanding was that every AP server will publish any content the client sends. In which case, I'd expect to do this on the client, i.e. the phone app. That's the one with the GPS sensor anyway. Then followers using compatible apps can see your checkin properly even if none of the home servers in between understand the data at all.

Of course, a dedicated website is also useful, especially as a demonstrator. It's just, given the above, I'm hanging out for cool, innovative, niche client-side applications to start taking advantage of the network.

Expand text...

28 January at 15:17 | Open on friendica.exon.name

Brian Hawthorne

@Edent @kitten_tech Maybe add location data to the glitch-soc fork of Mastodon, so all of us on glitch-soc servers will get (along with all the other wonderful features in glitch-doc)?

28 January at 17:44 | Open on infosec.exchange

Alaric Snell-Pym

@bhawthorne @Edent ideally, add support for "pass on what you're given even if you don't understand it" support so future intrepid explorers can just modify a client, too! ( "currently listening to", "what I'm eating/drinking" and "mood" extensions come immediately to mind). Also, clients should make some effort to display any and all unknown tags they find in posts, please, so I don't need to do anything too hard to find out where @Edent is today 👍

28 January at 19:13 | Open on fosstodon.org

Ian Wagner

@Edent <insert owl meme>

28 January at 12:29 | Open on fosstodon.org

Terence Eden

@ianthetechie you've lost me, sorry!

28 January at 12:59 | Open on mastodon.social

Ian Wagner

@Edent Dug up the image. Re: "about a dozen other things" 😂

28 January at 14:48 | Open on fosstodon.org

Derick Rethans

@Edent I am just about to attempt to implement this for my blog — I don't suppose this is a library that does this?

28 January at 16:01 | Open on phpc.social

Terence Eden

Nice! My toy server can now:

✅ Record who is following it.
✅ Post to multiple inboxes.
✅ Generate a permalink for its posts.

It doesn't do:
❌ Signature verification
❌ Handling replies, likes, or unfollows (it is a read-only account)
❌ Showing number of followers, posts, etc.

Pretty happy with that.
Next step - a UI so I can actually send custom posts.

28 January at 17:18 | Open on mastodon.social

Terence Eden

Not the prettiest page on the web, but I can now Geolocate my phone and find the 25 nearest named places on #OSM.

Next stage is making a button to send that location to my ActivityPub server to send out a message.

(This is crappy code, poorly architected. Just a Proof of Concept.)

Basic HTML page with a list of locations.

28 January at 20:13 | Open on mastodon.social

Terence Eden

I've just reposted a public status from my new location check-in service.

It doesn't handle replies or likes, but you can follow it.

Expect buggy and untested weirdness 🙂

28 January at 21:15 | Open on mastodon.social

Alyn

@Edent
I've tried following from Mastodon and IceShrimp instances just to see if there's a difference.

28 January at 21:39 | Open on wandering.shop

Terence Eden

@alyn oooh! I can see both requests. Do let me know what you find. Ta!

28 January at 21:50 | Open on mastodon.social

Gabbo the wafrn guy :neocat_floof_devil_256: (not a vampire)

@Edent@mastodon.social what language is it made in?

28 January at 21:53 | Open on app.wafrn.net

Denny

@Edent I've hit a 'waiting for approval' page again.

28 January at 21:57 | Open on boing.world

Terence Eden

@denny it takes a few moments for my server to approve. It looks like it has gone through from my side - if you refresh, is your end showing approved?

29 January at 7:47 | Open on mastodon.social

Terence Eden

It's all working!

You can follow @edent_location for my "FourSquare-style" check-ins to locations.

TODO:

📸 Upload and store photos.
🔣 Set the language text to prevent spurious "Translate" options.
🖼 Make the interface look nice.
🔒 Better security
👨‍💻 Tidy up the source code.