Using "nodeinfo" to check if other servers are supporting Diaspora?

Features and Ideas
1

Currently “nodeinfo” is mostly used for usage statistics, I guess. But we could use it for more. There is software out there that can - but don’t need to - work with Diaspora, like Hubzilla and Friendica.

Problem is that you can add users from these systems even if they haven’t activated the Diaspora protocol.

I think it would be best if all servers who speak the Diaspora protocol (Diaspora, Friendica, Hubzilla) would publish a basic “nodeinfo” dataset including the “protocols” part.

In some further step systems could check the remote systems for compatibility with the protocol when adding a profile.

In Friendica we now started with this: https://github.com/friendica/friendica/pull/3269

The basic nodeinfo set that we will now return looks like this:

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "software": {
    "name": "friendica",
    "version": "3.5.2-dev-1216"
  },
  "protocols": {
    "inbound": [
      "diaspora",
      "friendica",
      "gnusocial"
    ],
    "outbound": [
      "diaspora",
      "friendica",
      "gnusocial"
    ]
  },
  "services": {
    "inbound": [],
    "outbound": []
  },
  "usage": [],
  "openRegistrations": false,
  "metadata": {
    "nodeName": "pirati.ca - social networking for pirates"
  }
}

It would be great if Diaspora could expose this data at every time as well. Then I would contact Hubzilla to ask them to do so as well.

2

Looks to me like we are already doing what you are asking for:

https://pod.omgsrsly.net/nodeinfo/1.0

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "software": {
    "name": "diaspora",
    "version": "0.6.99.0-pb6b8faf3"
  },
  "protocols": {
    "inbound": [
      "diaspora"
    ],
    "outbound": [
      "diaspora"
    ]
  },
  "services": {
    "inbound": [],
    "outbound": []
  },
  "openRegistrations": false,
  "usage": {
    "users": {
      "total": 8,
      "activeHalfyear": 4,
      "activeMonth": 2
    }
  },
  "metadata": {
    "nodeName": "omgsrsly.net",
    "xmppChat": false
  }
}

Am I missing anything?

3

Question is if the nodeinfo has to be activated. Or is it always enabled on recent Diaspora servers and can’t be deactivated?

4

NodeInfo has been implemented in #6239 and has been released with version 0.5.3.0. You can disable some statistics (user count, post count, comment count) but NodeInfo should be always available.

5

Do you have an example of a server that only exposes the minimal data? I would like to keep Friendica similar to this.

So you think that we can rely on nodeinfo being exposed on all recent servers? That would be great.

6

Just pick a server from https://the-federation.info/diaspora that doesn’t expose any user stats like https://diapod.net/nodeinfo/1.0.

@supertux88 explained in #7120 (comment) that he is planning to use NodeInfo for the federation as well so we will also rely on NodeInfo, although currently we don’t rely on it.

7

Sounds like @supertux88 and me we are brothers in mind :wink:

3 Likes
8

Yes, diaspora already exposes the needed information. And I think we can add a check in the future, to only federate to pods that support the diaspora-protocol in nodeinfo. :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

I created a PR for NodeInfo 2.0 to make it possible for other (new) projects to support the diaspora-protocol (or any other existing protocol):

https://github.com/jhass/nodeinfo/pull/17

2 Likes