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  3. **#ActivityPub support in #Madblog**

**#ActivityPub support in #Madblog**

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activitypubfediversemadblogplatypushpubby
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  • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

    @wakest@app.wafrn.net @gabboman@gabboman.xyz @liaizon@wake.st the FQN is @fabio@manganiello.blog in my case, not @fabio@blog.fabiomanganiello.com (I made a split-domain configuration).

    The actor URL is https://manganiello.blog/ap/actor

    gabboman@gabboman.xyzG This user is from outside of this forum
    gabboman@gabboman.xyzG This user is from outside of this forum
    gabboman@gabboman.xyz
    wrote last edited by
    #10

    will investigate, thanks

    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • julian@fietkau.socialJ julian@fietkau.social

      @liaizon @fabio Alas, the PR has been merged, so it'll be a long while until I bother Claire again. πŸ™‚

      But I'll keep updating my own list. I see in the code where the interaction policy is declared, but not where individual quotes are authorized. If I quote this post here, let's test if both of us will see the quote.

      https://blog.fabiomanganiello.com/article/Madblog-federated-blogging-from-markdown

      fabio@manganiello.euF This user is from outside of this forum
      fabio@manganiello.euF This user is from outside of this forum
      fabio@manganiello.eu
      wrote last edited by
      #11

      @julian@fietkau.social @liaizon@wake.st I got the quote https://blog.fabiomanganiello.com/article/Madblog-federated-blogging-from-markdown πŸ™‚

      julian@fietkau.socialJ 1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

        @julian@fietkau.social @liaizon@wake.st I got the quote https://blog.fabiomanganiello.com/article/Madblog-federated-blogging-from-markdown πŸ™‚

        julian@fietkau.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
        julian@fietkau.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
        julian@fietkau.social
        wrote last edited by
        #12

        @fabio Right, and my server seems to have gotten the corresponding `Accept`. πŸ‘ But if you look at https://social.wake.st/@liaizon/116205306320048221 and scroll down, you see that @liaizon can't see the quote in my reply (and neither can people on any other server looking at this thread). This is because the `QuoteAuthorization` needs to be publicly resolvable: https://fediverse.codeberg.page/fep/fep/044f/#verifying-third-party-quote-posts

        fabio@manganiello.euF 1 Reply Last reply
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        • julian@fietkau.socialJ julian@fietkau.social

          @fabio Right, and my server seems to have gotten the corresponding `Accept`. πŸ‘ But if you look at https://social.wake.st/@liaizon/116205306320048221 and scroll down, you see that @liaizon can't see the quote in my reply (and neither can people on any other server looking at this thread). This is because the `QuoteAuthorization` needs to be publicly resolvable: https://fediverse.codeberg.page/fep/fep/044f/#verifying-third-party-quote-posts

          fabio@manganiello.euF This user is from outside of this forum
          fabio@manganiello.euF This user is from outside of this forum
          fabio@manganiello.eu
          wrote last edited by
          #13

          @julian@fietkau.social @liaizon@wake.st good catch, that was actually a bug in the quote_authorizations URL routing on Pubby's side - I've just pushed a fix for it https://git.platypush.tech/blacklight/pubby/commit/2b37e604defb8dbd9580af890c5854c2f9cd9dfd

          julian@fietkau.socialJ 1 Reply Last reply
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          • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

            @julian@fietkau.social @liaizon@wake.st good catch, that was actually a bug in the quote_authorizations URL routing on Pubby's side - I've just pushed a fix for it https://git.platypush.tech/blacklight/pubby/commit/2b37e604defb8dbd9580af890c5854c2f9cd9dfd

            julian@fietkau.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
            julian@fietkau.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
            julian@fietkau.social
            wrote last edited by
            #14

            @fabio @liaizon Oh excellent! Please let me know when the new version is live on your blog and I'll test again. πŸ™‚

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • fabio@manganiello.euF This user is from outside of this forum
              fabio@manganiello.euF This user is from outside of this forum
              fabio@manganiello.eu
              wrote last edited by
              #15

              @julian@activitypub.space @general@activitypub.space that would be very cool, but from my understanding Person vs. Group actor are mutually exclusive, so I can't have both on the same handle right?

              If that's the case I may have to rethink a bit of the current single-user approach - I guess that I'll need a @user@example.com Person actor (or optionally multiple of them) and a @blog@example.com Group actor. Which AFAIK is similar to what #WriteFreely does, but it requires me to rethink a bit of the general design.

              I've braindumped my thoughts here for now https://git.platypush.tech/blacklight/madblog/issues/21, thanks for the feedback!

              julian@activitypub.spaceJ 1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

                @julian@activitypub.space @general@activitypub.space that would be very cool, but from my understanding Person vs. Group actor are mutually exclusive, so I can't have both on the same handle right?

                If that's the case I may have to rethink a bit of the current single-user approach - I guess that I'll need a @user@example.com Person actor (or optionally multiple of them) and a @blog@example.com Group actor. Which AFAIK is similar to what #WriteFreely does, but it requires me to rethink a bit of the general design.

                I've braindumped my thoughts here for now https://git.platypush.tech/blacklight/madblog/issues/21, thanks for the feedback!

                julian@activitypub.spaceJ This user is from outside of this forum
                julian@activitypub.spaceJ This user is from outside of this forum
                julian@activitypub.space
                wrote last edited by julian@activitypub.space
                #16

                @fabio@manganiello.eu

                > from my understanding Person vs. Group actor are mutually exclusive, so I can't have both on the same handle right?

                Correct, while you can have webfinger resolve both a group actor and person actor from a single handle, that gets messy quickly because how the receiving end handles this is not specified. Mastodon for example only takes the first entry, which crucially means if a community and user have the same handle, then one of the actors is inaccessible to Mastodon.

                I don't think you need to introduce breaking changes (I hope!), the threadiverse component can be bolted on to existing functionality. In fact, I'd recommend maintaining the existing Person actor so that microblog compatibility is not impacted. It's not an either-or approach, NodeBB does handle both types effectively.

                Here are some quick answers to the open questions:

                Should the Person actor have its own inbox?
                Yes, the Person actor and the Group actor are two separate identities (as far as anybody outside of your instance is concerned.)

                Outbox representation β€” Should the Group's outbox contain the Announce
                activities, the inner Create activities, or both?

                This is optional (at least for NodeBB). If you investigate NodeBB's actors, all of their outboxes return an empty OrderedCollection because I simply haven't gotten around to it yet, and I don't know many implementations that read it. Federation works fine without it, but it would make sense to follow Lemmy or Piefed's lead here.

                Backwards compatibility β€” Should Madblog support a "hybrid" mode that sends both Create (for Mastodon) and Announce (for threadiverse)?

                Mastodon will correctly de-duplicate the object so sending both Create(Note/Article) and Announce(Create(Note/Article)) is fine. The former serves non-threadiverse followers, and the latter ensures threadiverse syncronization capability.

                NodeBB actually sends three πŸ™ˆ: Create(Note/Article), Announce(Create(Note/Article)), and Announce(Note/Article). That last one is not needed.

                Separate keypair for the Person actor? If the Person actor eventually needs to sign requests (e.g. for inbox delivery), it would need its own keypair.

                I believe so. It was trivial for me to just generate keypairs for everybody, so I don't know off-hand whether things break if your Person actor doesn't have one. It might not resolve in some implementations?

                1 Reply Last reply
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                • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

                  @silverpill@mitra.social @fabio@manganiello.blog good catch! https://git.platypush.tech/blacklight/madblog/commit/9024ba9c2dd1b4ad77e50892189c6a155eb199ce

                  silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                  silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                  silverpill@mitra.social
                  wrote last edited by
                  #17

                  @fabio @fabio Will it also work with profile parameter? We have to specify the profile because ActivityPub specification requires it:

                  https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#retrieving-objects

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                    silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                    silverpill@mitra.social
                    wrote last edited by
                    #18

                    @julian

                    If you investigate NodeBB's actors, all of their outboxes return an empty OrderedCollection because I simply haven't gotten around to it yet, and I don't know many implementations that read it.

                    I read from outboxes all the time. But I can't do that with NodeBB 😒

                    https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13478

                    julian@activitypub.spaceJ 1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

                      @silverpill@mitra.social @fabio@manganiello.blog yes, I've just realized that luckily requests is smart enough to split header parameters πŸ™‚

                      ❯ curl -I -H 'Accept: application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams' https://manganiello.blog/article/Madblog-federated-blogging-from-markdown
                      HTTP/2 200
                      server: nginx
                      date: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:43:44 GMT
                      content-type: application/activity+json
                      content-length: 69389
                      last-modified: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:39:54 GMT
                      etag: "81d02d339405c0ec"
                      cache-control: public, max-age=0, must-revalidate
                      language: en-US
                      
                      silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                      silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                      silverpill@mitra.social
                      wrote last edited by
                      #19

                      @fabio @fabio In your curl command, the closing quote (") is missing after https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams. When I make a request with the full media type string, the server still returns text/html

                      1 Reply Last reply
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                      • silverpill@mitra.socialS silverpill@mitra.social

                        @julian

                        If you investigate NodeBB's actors, all of their outboxes return an empty OrderedCollection because I simply haven't gotten around to it yet, and I don't know many implementations that read it.

                        I read from outboxes all the time. But I can't do that with NodeBB 😒

                        https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13478

                        julian@activitypub.spaceJ This user is from outside of this forum
                        julian@activitypub.spaceJ This user is from outside of this forum
                        julian@activitypub.space
                        wrote last edited by
                        #20

                        @silverpill@mitra.social I recall Mitra may be one of a select few 😝

                        Do you use it to backfill a profile? How often do you query the outbox?

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

                          @silverpill@mitra.social @fabio@manganiello.blog you're right, I completely overlooked that. Also the Python HTTP machinery isn't as clever as I thought so I had to trim parameters manually, but it should work now https://git.fabiomanganiello.com/blacklight/madblog/commit/76e7b72337b1ab7406fb307eb163a9a4097fcc0e

                          ❯ curl -I -H 'Accept: application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"' https://manganiello.blog/article/Madblog-federated-blogging-from-markdown
                          HTTP/2 200
                          server: nginx
                          date: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:06:01 GMT
                          content-type: application/activity+json
                          content-length: 69389
                          last-modified: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:39:54 GMT
                          etag: "81d02d339405c0ec"
                          cache-control: public, max-age=0, must-revalidate
                          language: en-US
                          
                          silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                          silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                          silverpill@mitra.social
                          wrote last edited by
                          #21

                          @fabio @fabio It's working, thanks!

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                            silverpill@mitra.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                            silverpill@mitra.social
                            wrote last edited by
                            #22

                            @julian Yes, to backfill a profile. It is a manual action.

                            I don't know who else does that, but @jonny is working on adding automatic profile backfill to Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/34597

                            julian@fietkau.socialJ jonny@neuromatch.socialJ 2 Replies Last reply
                            1
                            • silverpill@mitra.socialS silverpill@mitra.social

                              @julian Yes, to backfill a profile. It is a manual action.

                              I don't know who else does that, but @jonny is working on adding automatic profile backfill to Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/34597

                              julian@fietkau.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                              julian@fietkau.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                              julian@fietkau.social
                              wrote last edited by
                              #23

                              @silverpill @julian@activitypub.space I believe @hollo does it as well.

                              @general

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              1
                              • fabio@manganiello.euF fabio@manganiello.eu

                                #ActivityPub support in #Madblog

                                I am glad to announce that Madblog has now officially joined the #Fediverse family.

                                Madblog has already supported #Webmentions for the past couple of weeks, allowing your blog posts to be mentioned by other sites with Webmentions support (WordPress, Lemmy, HackerNews...) and get those mentions directly rendered on your page.

                                It now adds ActivityPub support too, using #Pubby, another little Python library that I've put together myself (just like Webmentions) as a mean to quickly plug ActivityPub support to any Python Web app.

                                Webmentions and Pubby follow similar principles and implement a similar API, and you can easily use them to add federation support to your existing Web applications - a single bind_webmentions or bind_activitypub call to your existing Flask/FastAPI/Tornado application should suffice for most of the cases.

                                Madblog may have now become the easiest way to publish a federated blog - and perhaps the only way that doesn't require a database, everything is based on plain Markdown files.

                                If you have a registered domain and a certificate, then hosting your federated blog is now just a matter of:

                                mkdir -p ~/madblog/markdown
                                cat <<EOF > ~/madblog/markdown/hello-world.md
                                
                                This is my first post on [Madblog](https://git.fabiomanganiello.com/madblog)!
                                EOF
                                
                                docker run -it \
                                  -p 8000:8000 \
                                  -v "$HOME/madblog:/data" \
                                  quay.io/blacklight/madblog
                                

                                And Markdown files can be hosted wherever you like - a Git folder, an Obsidian Vault, a Nextcloud Notes installation, a folder on your phone synchronized over SyncThing...

                                Federation support is also at a quite advanced state compared to e.g. #WriteFreely. It currently supports:

                                • Interactions rendered on the articles: if you like, boost, quote or reply to an article, all interactions are rendered directly at the bottom of the article (interactions with WriteFreely through federated accounts were kind of lost in the void instead)

                                • Guestbook support (optional): mentions to the federated Madblog handle that are not in response to articles are now rendered on a separate /guestbook route

                                • Email notifications: all interactions can have email notifications

                                • Support for quotes, also on Mastodon

                                • Support for mentions, just drop a @joe@example.com in your Markdown file and Joe will get a notification

                                • Support for hashtag federation

                                • Support for split-domain configurations, you can host your blog on blog.example.com but have a Fediverse handle like @blog@example.com. Search by direct post URL on Mastodon will work with both cases

                                • Support for custom profile fields, all rendered on Mastodon, with verification support

                                • Support for moderation, either through blocklist or allowlist, with support for rules on handles/usernames, URLs, domains or regular expressions

                                • A partial (but comprehensive for the provided features) implementation of the Mastodon API

                                If you want you can follow both the profiles of my blogs - they are now both federated:

                                • My personal blog: @fabio@manganiello.blog (it used to run WriteFreely before, so if you followed it you may need to unfollow it and re-follow it)

                                • The #Platypush blog: @blog@platypush.tech

                                https://blog.fabiomanganiello.com/article/Madblog-federated-blogging-from-markdown

                                jonny@neuromatch.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                jonny@neuromatch.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                jonny@neuromatch.social
                                wrote last edited by
                                #24

                                @fabio@manganiello.eu @fabio@manganiello.blog @blog omg thank you for the python lib. i was getting ready to write one but extremely good to see i can draw from (credit/depend on/etc.) prior art. adding to the inspo docs!!!

                                1 Reply Last reply
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                                • silverpill@mitra.socialS silverpill@mitra.social

                                  @julian Yes, to backfill a profile. It is a manual action.

                                  I don't know who else does that, but @jonny is working on adding automatic profile backfill to Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/34597

                                  jonny@neuromatch.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                  jonny@neuromatch.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                  jonny@neuromatch.social
                                  wrote last edited by
                                  #25

                                  @silverpill @julian @general Collections are one of the best parts of activitypub/streams and i have no idea why nobody uses them or works on them. like if we embraced the underlying graph structure of the data and used the canonicalization algos that have been developed in the meantime we get all the good parts of atproto (mostly efficient updating the pds system) basically for free

                                  jonny@neuromatch.socialJ 1 Reply Last reply
                                  1
                                  • jonny@neuromatch.socialJ jonny@neuromatch.social

                                    @silverpill @julian @general Collections are one of the best parts of activitypub/streams and i have no idea why nobody uses them or works on them. like if we embraced the underlying graph structure of the data and used the canonicalization algos that have been developed in the meantime we get all the good parts of atproto (mostly efficient updating the pds system) basically for free

                                    jonny@neuromatch.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                    jonny@neuromatch.socialJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                    jonny@neuromatch.social
                                    wrote last edited by
                                    #26

                                    @silverpill @julian @general account backfilling is issue number THIRTY FOUR in mastodon and has >700 thumbs, >200 comments hemming and hawing about how possible it would be for TEN YEARS.

                                    the solution is just "enumerate the outbox" and it's 200 lines.

                                    like we already have a mechanism for reply controls: the reply collection.
                                    for fine-grained post visibility: access control on the outbox collection.
                                    broadcasting feeds and posts between instances: collections
                                    migrations: collections
                                    store and forward, offline-focused AP: collections

                                    and so on.

                                    1 Reply Last reply
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                                    • django@social.coopD This user is from outside of this forum
                                      django@social.coopD This user is from outside of this forum
                                      django@social.coop
                                      wrote last edited by
                                      #27

                                      @julian @silverpill ActivityPub API clients dont need their server to backfill thanks to proxyURL, but Actors will look like they haven’t posted 😒

                                      julian@activitypub.spaceJ 1 Reply Last reply
                                      1
                                      • django@social.coopD django@social.coop

                                        @julian @silverpill ActivityPub API clients dont need their server to backfill thanks to proxyURL, but Actors will look like they haven’t posted 😒

                                        julian@activitypub.spaceJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                        julian@activitypub.spaceJ This user is from outside of this forum
                                        julian@activitypub.space
                                        wrote last edited by
                                        #28

                                        @django@social.coop sounds like I'll have to implement it sooner rather than later!

                                        1 Reply Last reply
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