I think if there's one thing I'd say to #ActivityPub developers, it's this: it seems like it's going to be easier to just parse Activity Streams 2.0 data as plain JSON, but it's not. You have to keep track of too many variations. Use a JSON-LD library instead. For JavaScript, try activitystrea.ms:

https://github.com/jasnell/activitystrea.ms

@evan i would add that there are several other more actively maintained options, at least: https://json-ld.org/#developers

in the most basic case, expanding the document should make it unambiguous:

- all keys are normalized to full identifiers with exactly 1 possible representation instead of infinitely many
- all values are normalized to JSON
arrays of JSON objects
- those JSON objects explicitly say whether they have an id (Reference) or a value (Literal)

@trwnh "more actively maintained"?

The code is long-term but it was built by one author of AS2 and maintained by the other. It works well, and I use it in production systems all the time.

I'm pretty sure @hongminhee has made a similar package, although I'm not sure it's distributed independently.

@evan@cosocial.ca @trwnh@mastodon.social I'm maintaining the @fedify/vocab package which depends on the jsonld package from Digital Bazaar. It's written in 100% TypeScript, and has worked well on production services!

@trwnh "more actively maintained"?

The code is long-term but it was built by one author of AS2 and maintained by the other. It works well, and I use it in production systems all the time.

I'm pretty sure @hongminhee has made a similar package, although I'm not sure it's distributed independently.

@evan @trwnh @hongminhee I think he was referring to the GitHub project description: "Activity Streams 2.0 for Node.js (this package is not actively maintained..."

@steve@social.technoetic.com @trwnh@mastodon.social we shouldn't stop using software just because they're no longer maintained.

I believe request is no longer maintained, in favour of native node fetch, but good god would you look at those downloads.

@evan @trwnh @hongminhee I think he was referring to the GitHub project description: "Activity Streams 2.0 for Node.js (this package is not actively maintained..."

@steve @trwnh @hongminhee ha! That was the notice that got me to become a maintainer. But I don't have the admin rights to change it!

@jasnell can you give admin rights on the activitystrea.ms repo so I can change the message and also push automatically?

@evan James archived the repo today, assumably in response to this question. I'm going to keep working from my personal fork, and I'll use that to push to npm. I think I can update the info in package.json on the topic, too. A change that's been waiting too long.

@steve @trwnh @hongminhee @jasnell

@evan@cosocial.ca that seems odd, instead of transferring it to you or SWF

Did you get access to the npm package? Or perhaps you'll have to use a scoped package name.

@julian I already have access to the package. I'd been squatting in his GitHub namespace for too long anyway.