What is so hard about implementing ActivityPub? What could have been done better? (lemy.lol)

submitted 2 months ago by matcha_addict@lemy.lol to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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I heard often about activityPub being challenging to implement.

Now I know part of this is because, if you are building on activityPub, you want interop with existing platforms such as mastodon, and they do their own thing.

But ignoring that aspect, what is so hard about activityPub? What could have been done better?

I am a software developer, so feel free to use software dev concepts and terms when explaining. Thanks!

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[-] isaac@microblog.lakora.us 5 points 2 months ago

I think the biggest issue is HTTP Signatures - they're not part of the standard, they're not well-documented, and without them your server won't federate with anything and so you have no idea whether it works.

Plus sometimes an implementation works with Mastodon but not something else. I think Mastodon just uses certain headers when calculating the signature, but Bridgy Fed also includes the URL or something. The C# code I'd copied was programmed to exclude the URL always, so I had to change that, but it took a while to figure out that that was the issue.

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