Introducing FediDB - DevTools for ActivityPub

Introducing FediDB - DevTools for ActivityPub

Hello Everyone!

I am the lead developer of Pixelfed and know how challenging ActivityPub can be to implement.

FediDB is a suite of tools for AP devs to help make it easier to test and validate your implementation with existing implementations like Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed and Pleroma.

We have 3 main features in development:

  • Request Bin - HTTP Bin with valid AP Actor to test federation support (HTTP Sig, Verb + Actors and more)

  • Verb Validator - Validate objects with coverage report for known implementations

  • Signature Checker - HTTP Signature validation helper

We look forward to adding support for more implementations and working with other projects to shape the direction of this project.

The project is in private beta while we fix bugs, will be open to everyone soon!

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This sounds like it’s going to be really useful. Is the source available somewhere? Would love to spin up a server and try it.

Hi, the service is hosted at https://fedidb.org/ and the source code will be published after some bugs are fixed!

@dansup can you be at today’s meeting? I’d like to discuss how FediDB could become part of an official way to help develop ActivityPub-compatible software. If you can make it, please edit the first post to add the relevant topic!

I’m attempting to turn my blog into an ActivityPub node and I would love to get access to fedidb.org to help test my development.

I went to fedidb.org and it says login but I don’t see a register, so I assume it is still not open to the public yet?

We will be launching FediDB to the public in the coming weeks, and will be reaching out to a few developers for early access before the launch.

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Cool! Would dev tools in general be a good topic for one of the regular meetings? SocialCG - SocialHub

FediDB is now available for everyone!

https://fedidb.org

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Hey @dansup, congratulations on launching FediDB. I see that the license is not free, can you explain why? I thought FediDB was a tool to help ActivityPub developers to test their applications. How can that be non-free?

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Thank you! We are using a generic Terms and Privacy policy similar to the one we used on Pixelfed. The project is free, and I will work on replacing those pages with better policies that reflect the project.

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Congratulations @dansup the UI looks great, clean and crisp. You probably noticed, but yesterday FediDB featured on HN at FediDB – Developer Tools for ActivityPub | Hacker News.

Any chance to get access to FediDB (“confirmation mail”)?

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I was wondering the same :slight_smile:

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While waiting for access, thank you and my 2 cents from seeing this image :

Bildschirmfoto 2021-04-04 um 11.30.28

While I can assume that “Unlike” is probably Undo Like (as specified),

I can also assume “Photo” is the ActivityPub Image type.

But totally wonder what “Text” or “Poll” means as they do not exist in AP.
“Poll” is probably Question but with “Text” you can either be like Trump and send Note or you can be clever and write Article while also Document could be “Text”…

Could this become conformant?

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If this was the case I would expect a single button.

I’d assume you should be able to make custom activities and objects (or even templates for them?) and name them whatever you want. The “+” button suggests that. But, yeah, we’ll never know until we’re able to receive those emails.

Yes but this single button should be named Dislike which is in fact an ActivityPub Activity!

If people read “Unlike” on the front page (!) of an ActivityPub test suite then it bakes in the heads of users, it “crabs” brains (“crabs” as in “f.”) …

The problem is really again an again:
We are talking about a protocol.
We can debate if Unlike or Dislike is a nicer word (maybe let’s watch Life of Brian in between).
Let us just NOT use the wrong word with the protocol, Pöhse Puben (don’t know french Life of Brian) …

On hindsight Like and Dislike were maybe just two of a wide range of social interactions with some content, that were popular / common at the time. Currently many platforms use a broader range of emotions you can express. For example both Github and LinkedIn using “Reactions”, so maybe e.g. a React activity with either an emoji representing the reaction, or a vocabulary of reaction types would be a good extension.

Other than that, I agree. Unlike should be Undo{Like} (and usually a single button, but I understand if FediDB wants to make it more explicit what you are sending based on UI interactions, but maybe the button label should be ‘Undo Like’ as well then).

PS. No one tagged @dansup here, until now, with the notification email issue you are having… (which is most likely to give email notification)

Sorry, @dansup started this, so is informed about replies anywhere.
Discourse is a SILO software, not federated. So mentioning does the same as answering (?)
Apart from that, Sven applied with another email to FediDB and wrote it in the remarks box …