Webfinger

This service implements the WebFinger protocol, which allows remote services to discover local users.

Features

Automatically find ActivityPub actors through their username
Returns a 404 error if the actor doesn't exist

Dependencies

ActivityPub ActorService

Install

$ npm install @semapps/webfinger --save

Usage

const { WebfingerService } = require('@semapps/webfinger');

module.exports = {
  mixins: [WebfingerService],
  settings: {
    usersContainer: "http://localhost:3000/actors/",
    domainName: "localhost" // Not necessary if it is the same as usersContainer
  }
}

Optionally, you can configure the API routes with moleculer-web:

const { ApiGatewayService } = require('moleculer-web');

module.exports = {
  mixins: [ApiGatewayService],
  dependencies: ['webfinger'],
  async started() {
    [
      ...(await this.broker.call('webfinger.getApiRoutes')),
      // Other routes here...
    ].forEach(route => this.addRoute(route));
  }
}

Settings

Property	Type	Default	Description
`usersContainer`	`String`	required	Container where the actors can be found
`domainName`	`String`		Domain name used for the user@domain webfinger identifier. If not set, the domain name will be guessed from the users' container.

Discovering an user with Webfinger

In the Webfinger protocol, users are identified by their username and the domain name where they are hosted: username@domain. This is similar to email addresses, except services like Mastodon add a @ at the beginning.

To find an user, a simple GET is enough:

GET /.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:simon@localhost HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:3000
Accept: application/json

If the user exists locally, it will return a JSON like this:

{
  "subject": "acct:simon@localhost",
  "aliases": [
    "http://localhost:3000/actors/simon"
  ],
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": "self",
      "type": "application/activity+json",
      "href": "http://localhost:3000/actors/simon"
    }
  ]
}

#Features

#Dependencies

#Install

#Usage

#Settings

#Discovering an user with Webfinger