W3C Social Web WG Brainstorming

This repo is a collection of resources related to ongoing development of Social and Federation API specificaitons, according to the SocialWG charter.

Brainstorming

Common Ground

Bearer tokens

Bearer tokens for authentication
Leave obtaining the bearer token out of the spec, since there are already several RFCs for ways to obtain bearer tokens

Endpoints

Similar but different:

	Read content	Publish content	Receive notifications
ActivityPump	GET /outbox	POST to /outbox	GET /inbox
Micropub	n/a; GET homepage (or feed URL) assumed to be marked up with microformats2	discover micropub endpoint (rel="micropub") and POST to it	receive webmention at discoverable rel="webmention" endpoint; how to handle not spec'd
SoLiD	GET container or resource URI	POST to URI of a `Container`	?

Issues

Vocabulary - h-entry and h-card vs ActivityStreams 2.0 content types
author in microformats vs actor and attributedTo in AS
url and uid in microformats vs url, @id and href in AS

Micropub

Things ActivityPump does that Micropub wants

Audience targeting for private content ("to")
Propagating state changes (e.g. an "update" of an object needs to propagate to consumers)
Collections - managing the "following" collection vs the "posts" collection

Ideas

Generating "activity" posts after manipulating content posts
Or attaching all metadata to the 'object' and sending pure objects (that still look like activities) for publishing and distribution as JSON.

Example of Micropub requests posted as JSON

** Expansion upon these at http://rhiaro.co.uk/2015/05/micropubbing-with **

Creating a Post

Creating a post, specifying properties from the microformats2 vocab. The type and properties map to the output of the Microformats 2 parsed result.

Form-encoded requests have a property h=* which specifies the type of object being created. All other properties are considered properties of the object being created.

h=entry&
content=hello+moon&
category[]=indieweb&
category[]=micropub

When submitting a request in JSON format, simply send the JSON-encoded representation of the Microformats2 object you are creating. Properties such as author and publish date are set by the Micropub endpoint if not specified in the request.

{
  "type": ["h-entry"],
  "properties": {
    "content": ["hello moon"],
    "category": ["indieweb","micropub"]
  }
}

Editing a post

Because of the nuances of modifying specific values in properties, these requests do not have a "simple" form-encoded representation, and must use nested properties with array notation. These form-encoded requests are the same structure as the JSON version, but serialized as form-encoded instead.

Replacing all values of a property

Updating a specific property of a post, replacing all values of the property. If the property does not exist already, it is created.

edit-of=http://example.com/post/1
&update[properties][content]=hello+moon

{
  "edit-of": "http://example.com/post/1",
  "update": {
    "properties": {
      "content": ["hello moon"]
    }
  }
}

Adding a value to a property

Adding a value. If there are any existing values for this property, they are not changed, the new values are added. If the property does not exist already, it is created.

edit-of=http://example.com/post/1
&add[properties][category][]=indieweb
&add[properties][category][]=foo

{
  "edit-of": "http://example.com/post/1",
  "add": {
    "properties": {
      "category": ["indieweb","foo"]
    }
  }
}

Removing a value from a property

Removing a value. This removes just the "indieweb" value from the "category" property, leaving all other values. If no values remain, the property is removed.

edit-of=http://example.com/post/1
&remove[properties][category]=indieweb

{
  "edit-of": "http://example.com/post/1",
  "delete": {
    "properties": {
      "category": ["indieweb"]
    }
  }
}

Removing a property

edit-of=http://example.com/post/1
&remove[properties]=indieweb

{
  "edit-of": "http://example.com/post/1",
  "delete": {
    "properties": ["category"]
  }
}

Deleting a post

delete-of=http://example.com/post/1

{
  "delete-of": "http://example.com/post/1"
}

ActivityPump

Things that Micropub does that ActivityPump wants

Ability to get source of post (e.g. original markdown posted in)
Uploading multiple files
Split up specification into more manageable chunks and not be one huge daunting spec

Minimum viable create request

The minimum allowed in the spec is:

{
    "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "@type": "Create",
    "object": {
        "@type": "Note",
        "content": "Hello world!"
    }
}

If we had it so that an activity could be created as a side effect:

{
    "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "@type": "Note",
    "content": "Hello world!"
}

This as a side-effect would not only create the note but also create an activity.

Notes

In ActivityPump, following someone results in seeing everything they post directed to their followers
"quiet posting" in AP doesn't exist, e.g. you can't make something public and not have it pushed to everyone-

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