Some quick thoughts on Unit Testing ActivityPub
shkspr.mobi
I'll be radically honest here - I never really got the idea of "Test Driven Development". I'm much more of a "telnet into production and damn the consequences" kind of guy. Look, it's much more fun and my cardiologist recommends severe shocks every now and again. The essence of unit testing is pretty simple: Feed a function some data See how it responds Send it good data and if it returns…
  • lobsters__mariusor@crustaceanson.theshelf.topM
    1·
    21 days ago

    I hate to say it, but Edent is propagating what Mastodon considers ActivityPub which has only a passing relation to the actual specification.

    I wish people would implement the specification in its entirety, not just the parts that gets them compatible with Mastodon. That includes the client to server parts and that includes things that Mastodon fully doesn’t support (Activities with multiple Objects and Actors, etc)

    If anyone is curious about how that would look, I have implemented a reasonably large test-suite for my FedBOX project.

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    • lobsters__edent@crustaceanson.theshelf.topM
      1·
      21 days ago

      Thanks for letting me know. I’ve worked hard to ensure that my ActivityBot stuff works with MissKey, Pleroma, and others. I’m unsure which bits you think are Mastodon only? I’d certainly be keen to expand compatibility.

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      • lobsters__mariusor@crustaceanson.theshelf.topM
        1·
        21 days ago

        I was talking specifically about the limitations that Mastodon enforces onto the rest of the fediverse that wants to be compatible with them by outright rejecting the ActivityPub documents that have one of these:

        • inReplyTo with more than one single thing.
        • attributedTo with more than one single thing.
        • actor with more than one single thing.
        • object with more than one single thing.

        Then there are the slightly less offensive issues - which don’t result in an outright rejection:

        • Object can be something else than a Note
        • Attachments can have any number of items, not maximum 4.

        These I can remember on the top of my head, I’ve always wanted to create a Mastodon quirks list, but somehow never got to it.

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        • lobsters__mariusor@crustaceanson.theshelf.topM
          1·
          21 days ago

          Also, something that tickled my pedantry bone, and I’m not sure if it’s just a simplification for the purpose of writing the article, but WebFinger and HTTP-Signatures are not part of ActivityPub, even though they’re used in the fediverse.

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  • lobsters__mro@crustaceanson.theshelf.topM
    1·
    21 days ago

    only partially related, I find the general state of affairs in regard of tests miserable.

    Every effort is worth to be praised.

    Problems started with https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#%3A~%3Atext=Test+suite having not a single day of operation AFAIK, the same holds for project-related tests. Usually they depend on complex, brittle stacks.

    No test suite at the standard, no reference implementation, no server implementors’ habit of providing testable endpoints.

    Tests being a service to the community deserve more love, federation requires diverse implementations cooperating.

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