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Federation

Supported federation protocols and standards

Supported FEPs

NodeInfo

NeoDB instances can be identified from user agent string (NeoDB/x.x (+https://example.org)) and protocols in its nodeinfo, e.g. https://neodb.social/nodeinfo/2.0/ : 

{
  "version": "2.0",
  "software": {
    "name": "neodb",
    "version": "0.10.4.13",
    "repository": "https://github.com/neodb-social/neodb",
    "homepage": "https://neodb.net/"
  },
  "protocols": ["activitypub", "neodb"],
}

ActivityPub

NeoDB's ActivityPub implementation is based on Takahē, with some change to enable interchange of additional information between NeoDB instances.

Activity

NeoDB add additional fields to Note activity:

  • relatedWith is a list of NeoDB specific activities which are associated with this Note. For each activity, id and href are both unique links to that activity, withRegardTo links to the catalog item, attributedTo links to the user, type is one of:
    • Status, its status can be one of: complete, progress, wishlist and dropped
    • Rating, its value is rating grade (int, 1-10), worst is always 1, best is always 10
    • Comment, its content is comment text
    • Review, its name is review title, content is its body, mediaType is always text/markdown for now
    • Note, its content is note text
  • tag is used to store list of NeoDB catalog items, which are related with this activity. type of NeoDB catalog item can be one of Edition, Movie, TVShow, TVSeason, TVEpisode, Album, Game, Podcast, PodcastEpisode, Performance, PerformanceProduction; href will be the link to that item.

Example: 

{
  "@context": ["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams", {
    "blurhash": "toot:blurhash",
    "Emoji": "toot:Emoji",
    "focalPoint": {
      "@container": "@list",
      "@id": "toot:focalPoint"
    },
    "Hashtag": "as:Hashtag",
    "manuallyApprovesFollowers": "as:manuallyApprovesFollowers",
    "sensitive": "as:sensitive",
    "toot": "http://joinmastodon.org/ns#",
    "votersCount": "toot:votersCount",
    "featured": {
      "@id": "toot:featured",
      "@type": "@id"
    }
  }, "https://w3id.org/security/v1"],
  "id": "https://neodb.social/@april_long_face@neodb.social/posts/380919151408919488/",
  "type": "Note",
  "relatedWith": [{
    "id": "https://neodb.social/p/5oyF0qRx96mKKmVpFzHtMM",
    "type": "Status",
    "status": "complete",
    "withRegardTo": "https://neodb.social/movie/7hfF7d0aFMaqHpFjUpq4zR",
    "attributedTo": "https://neodb.social/@april_long_face@neodb.social/",
    "href": "https://neodb.social/p/5oyF0qRx96mKKmVpFzHtMM",
    "published": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.745240+00:00",
    "updated": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.750917+00:00"
  }, {
    "id": "https://neodb.social/p/47cJnbQTkbSSN2izLwQMjo",
    "type": "Comment",
    "withRegardTo": "https://neodb.social/movie/7hfF7d0aFMaqHpFjUpq4zR",
    "attributedTo": "https://neodb.social/@april_long_face@neodb.social/",
    "content": "Broadway cin\u00e9math\u00e8que, at least I laughed hard.",
    "href": "https://neodb.social/p/47cJnbQTkbSSN2izLwQMjo",
    "published": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.745240+00:00",
    "updated": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.777276+00:00"
  }, {
    "id": "https://neodb.social/p/3AyYu974qo6OU09AAsPweQ",
    "type": "Rating",
    "best": 10,
    "value": 7,
    "withRegardTo": "https://neodb.social/movie/7hfF7d0aFMaqHpFjUpq4zR",
    "worst": 1,
    "attributedTo": "https://neodb.social/@april_long_face@neodb.social/",
    "href": "https://neodb.social/p/3AyYu974qo6OU09AAsPweQ",
    "published": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.784220+00:00",
    "updated": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.786458+00:00"
  }],
  "attributedTo": "https://neodb.social/@april_long_face@neodb.social/",
  "content": "<p>\u770b\u8fc7 <a href=\"https://neodb.social/~neodb~/movie/7hfF7d0aFMaqHpFjUpq4zR\" rel=\"nofollow\">\u963f\u8bfa\u62c9</a> \ud83c\udf15\ud83c\udf15\ud83c\udf15\ud83c\udf17\ud83c\udf11  <br>Broadway cin\u00e9math\u00e8que, at least I laughed hard.</p><p><a href=\"https://neodb.social/tags/\u6211\u770b\u6211\u542c\u6211\u8bfb/\" class=\"mention hashtag\" rel=\"tag\">#\u6211\u770b\u6211\u542c\u6211\u8bfb</a></p>",
  "published": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.745Z",
  "sensitive": false,
  "tag": [{
    "type": "Hashtag",
    "href": "https://neodb.social/tags/\u6211\u770b\u6211\u542c\u6211\u8bfb/",
    "name": "#\u6211\u770b\u6211\u542c\u6211\u8bfb"
  }, {
    "type": "Movie",
    "href": "https://neodb.social/movie/7hfF7d0aFMaqHpFjUpq4zR",
    "image": "https://neodb.social/m/item/doubanmovie/2024/09/13/a30bf2f3-4f79-43ef-b22f-58ebc3fd8aae.jpg",
    "name": "Anora"
  }],
  "to": ["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"],
  "updated": "2024-11-17T10:16:42.750Z",
  "url": "https://neodb.social/@april_long_face/posts/380919151408919488/"
}

This is not ideal but a practical manner to pass along additional information between NeoDB instances and other ActivityPub servers. We have some ideas for improvements, but are open to more suggestions.

Relay

NeoDB instances may share public rating and reviews with a default relay, which is currently https://relay.neodb.net. This relay is used to propagate public activities and catalog information between NeoDB instances.

Owner of each instance may choose to turn this off in their admin settings.

ATProto

NeoDB is not a PDS itself currently, but can interact with PDS to import user's social graph, and send status updates. So technically NeoDB does not do full federation in ATProto, but NeoDB will handle some side effect from federation, e.g. when user logging in via ATProto handle, NeoDB will resolve user's DID and store it, and will attempt further operation with the DID, and update user's handle if that's changed, and use the corresponding PDS for that handle; user may still have to login NeoDB again with their Bluesky app password, since the change of PDS may invalidates previous app password.