I think the #ActivityPub client-to-server API is extremely important and underrated.

[smallcircles@social.coop]

@evan @steve

Well, but a part of the specs can certainly be considered a message bus with channels conceptually.

Channel is the name that AsyncAPI uses, which maps to domain aggregates and actor streams.

But considering things purely event-based is stretching it, and may be better to discern between commands and events.

[benpate@mastodon.social]

@thisismissem @steve @mariusor @smallcircles @evan

Just checking my memory.. this concept exists already, yes?

https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub/Primer/proxyUrl_endpoint

Are you just saying that the new API spec should include this? Or am I missing something?

[steve@social.technoetic.com]

@mariusor @smallcircles @evan I *think* it’s
clear. I agree it’s a kind of “client”, just not necessarily a C2S client.

[smallcircles@social.coop]

@evan @steve

Btw, wrt fediverse we really live in a multiverse by all the different perspectives people have towards what the network should or should not provide. All having different physics.

Where ActivityPub is gravity, and fediverse is entropy and chaos, and universes have become inaccessible over time, past stations.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@benpate @thisismissem @steve @mariusor @smallcircles

Yes, proxyUrl already exists. There's a use case here:

https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api/issues/10

The only other way I've seen this use case discussed is with client-side HTTP Signature keys. There's some kind of negotiation between the server and the client, and then the client can make requests to remote servers using HTTP Signature and a key it controls.

[mariusor@metalhead.club]

@steve OK, but why?

I feel like I explained my position relatively clearly, I would like to understand yours, even though I feel some animosity has started to crop up.

@smallcircles @evan

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@smallcircles @steve maybe? I guess you could consider the `sharedInbox` to be like that.

I think that activities sent to the API by a client are kind of like commands, but they can also be events that happened on a different system.

If I got an achievement in a game, and that was sent as an activity to the API, it's more like an event notification than a command.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@smallcircles @steve I understand that people make their own metaphors for how AP works.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@steve @mariusor @smallcircles so, a client could send some kind of definition for the timeline ("only Create/Image or Create/Video activities from the inbox where the image is tagged 'caturday'") and then the server sorts data into that timeline? That sounds like a neat feature.

However, I think there might be some definitions that are so common that we could just define them in a spec, like `notifications`.

[steve@social.technoetic.com]

@mariusor @smallcircles @evan No animosity here. However, I’m not sure how to explain it more clearly. I’m referring to C2S as described in chapter 6 of the ActivityPub specification (and the conformance profiles in Section 2.1). It sounded to me like you’re using a more general definition of “client”, which is fine, just different in significant ways (if it only dereferences and renders AP data).

[smallcircles@social.coop]

@evan @steve

Rather than sharedInbox I was more thinking that by implementing the HTTP API and msg exchanges in a well-prescribed manner, these would effectively model an event bus conceptually. After which you can talk about it as a higher abstraction that exists, and not get lost in the reeds of the impl details anymore.

[smallcircles@social.coop]

@steve @mariusor @evan

He he, language is hard. A case of terminology overload and clashing terms. Domain driven design has the clearly defined bounded context here which is the scope within which terms are valid. Forming a consistency boundary. These context lines are blurred in fediverse talk. 😅

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@evan @benpate @steve @mariusor @smallcircles my understanding of proxyUrl is that it's just fetching a remote object, but without forwarding authorization

For many cases you want to forward the request as the authenticated user to the remote server, not doing the request anonymously

[mariusor@metalhead.club]

@thisismissem it's not explicitly saying to forward authorization, but to me that's implied from "require authentication":

proxyUrl: Endpoint URI so this actor's clients may access remote ActivityStreams objects which require authentication to access

https://w3c.github.io/activitypub/#proxyUrl

@evan @benpate @steve @smallcircles

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@smallcircles @steve sure. I am not a fan of the idea that AP is a message-passing system; it's a read-write API.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@mariusor I have implemented it requiring OAuth on one side and using HTTP Signature on the other. I think you need to use the user's authorization for private content or to respect personal blocks. It sucks for caching but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@thisismissem @benpate @steve @smallcircles

[benpate@mastodon.social]

Yeah, this is how I'd expect it to work (with the possible addition of *also* allowing cookie auth on the client side)

But yeah. Locally authenticated user from my client -> my server, then HTTP signature from my server -> your server

@evan @mariusor @thisismissem @steve @smallcircles

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@benpate

With all the standard warnings around proxies!

@mariusor @thisismissem @steve @smallcircles

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@smallcircles @steve @mariusor

I think in particular the terms "publisher" and "consumer" from AS2 and "client" and "server" from AP don't always map cleanly, especially with HTTP POST requests.

When a client delivers an activity to the actor's outbox, the client is the publisher of that activity, and the server is the consumer.

Same when a sending server (publisher) delivers an activity to a receiving server (consumer).