microblog.pub

A self-hosted, single-user, ActivityPub powered microblog.

Still in early development.

Features

• Implements a basic ActivityPub server (with federation)
  • Compatible with Mastodon and others (Pleroma, Hubzilla...)
  • Also implements a remote follow compatible with Mastodon instances
• Exposes your outbox as a basic microblog
• Implements IndieAuth endpoints (authorization and token endpoint)
  • U2F support
  • You can use your ActivityPub identity to login to other websites/app
• Admin UI with notifications and the stream of people you follow
• Allows you to attach files to your notes
  • Privacy-aware image upload endpoint that strip EXIF meta data before storing the file
• No JavaScript, that's it, even the admin UI is pure HTML/CSS
• Easy to customize (the theme is written Sass)
  • mobile-friendly theme
  • with dark and light version
• Microformats aware (exports h-feed, h-entry, h-cards, ...)
• Exports RSS/Atom feeds
• Comes with a tiny HTTP API to help posting new content and performing basic actions
• Easy to "cache" (the external/public-facing microblog part)
  • With a good setup, cached content can be served most of the time
  • You can setup a "purge" hook to let you invalidate cache when the microblog was updated
• Deployable with Docker (Docker compose for everything: dev, test and deployment)
• Focus on testing
  • Tested against the official ActivityPub test suite ([ ] TODO submit the report)
  • CI runs some local "federation" tests
  • Manually tested against Mastodon
  • Project is running an up-to-date instance

ActivityPub

microblog.pub implements an ActivityPub server, it implements both the client to server API and the federated server to server API.

Compatible with Mastodon (which is not following the spec closely), but will drop OStatus messages.

Activities are verified using HTTP Signatures or by fetching the content on the remote server directly.

Running your instance

Installation

$ git clone
$ make css
$ cp -r config/me.sample.yml config/me.yml

Configuration

$ make password
Password: <enter a password; nothing will show on screen>
$2b$12$iW497g...

Edit config/me.yml to add the above-generated password, like so:

username: 'username'
name: 'You Name'
icon_url: 'https://you-avatar-url'
domain: 'your-domain.tld'
summary: 'your summary'
https: true
pass: $2b$12$iW497g...

Deployment

$ docker-compose up -d

Development

The most convenient way to hack on microblog.pub is to run the server locally, and run

# One-time setup
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
# Start the Celery worker, RabbitMQ and MongoDB
$ docker-compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml up -d
# Run the server locally
$ MICROBLOGPUB_DEBUG=1 FLASK_APP=app.py flask run -p 5005 --with-threads

ActivityPub API

GET /

Returns the actor profile, with links to all the "standard" collections.

GET /tags/:tag

Special collection that reference notes with the given tag.

GET /stream

Special collection that returns the stream/inbox as displayed in the UI.

User API

The user API is used by the admin UI (and requires a CSRF token when used with a regular user session), but it can also be accessed with an API key.

All the examples are using HTTPie.

POST /api/note/delete{?id}

Deletes the given note id (the note must from the instance outbox).

Answers a 201 (Created) status code.

You can pass the id via JSON, form data or query argument.

Example

$ http POST https://microblog.pub/api/note/delete Authorization:'Bearer <token>' id=http://microblob.pub/outbox/<note_id>/activity

Response

{
    "activity": "https://microblog.pub/outbox/<delete_id>"
}

POST /api/like{?id}

Likes the given activity.

Answers a 201 (Created) status code.

You can pass the id via JSON, form data or query argument.

Example

$ http POST https://microblog.pub/api/like Authorization:'Bearer <token>' id=http://activity-iri.tld

Response

{
    "activity": "https://microblog.pub/outbox/<like_id>"
}

POST /api/boost{?id}

Boosts/Announces the given activity.

Answers a 201 (Created) status code.

You can pass the id via JSON, form data or query argument.

Example

$ http POST https://microblog.pub/api/boost Authorization:'Bearer <token>' id=http://activity-iri.tld

Response

{
    "activity": "https://microblog.pub/outbox/<announce_id>"
}

POST /api/block{?actor}

Blocks the given actor, all activities from this actor will be dropped after that.

Answers a 201 (Created) status code.

You can pass the id via JSON, form data or query argument.

Example

$ http POST https://microblog.pub/api/block Authorization:'Bearer <token>' actor=http://actor-iri.tld/

Response

{
    "activity": "https://microblog.pub/outbox/<block_id>"
}

POST /api/follow{?actor}

Follows the given actor.

Answers a 201 (Created) status code.

You can pass the id via JSON, form data or query argument.

Example

$ http POST https://microblog.pub/api/follow Authorization:'Bearer <token>' actor=http://actor-iri.tld/

Response

{
    "activity": "https://microblog.pub/outbox/<follow_id>"
}

POST /api/new_note{?content,reply}

Creates a new note. reply is the IRI of the "replied" note if any.

Answers a 201 (Created) status code.

You can pass the content and reply via JSON, form data or query argument.

Example

$ http POST https://microblog.pub/api/new_note Authorization:'Bearer <token>' content=hello

Response

{
    "activity": "https://microblog.pub/outbox/<create_id>"
}

GET /api/stream

Example

$ http GET https://microblog.pub/api/stream Authorization:'Bearer <token>'

Response

Contributions

PRs are welcome, please open an issue to start a discussion before your start any work.