ActivityStreams

A set of Traits and Types that make up the ActivityStreams and ActivityPub specifications

• Find the code on git.asonix.dog
• Read the docs on docs.rs
• Join the matrix channel at #activitypub:asonix.dog
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Usage

First, add ActivityStreams to your dependencies

[dependencies]
activitystreams = "0.7.0-alpha.0"

Types

The project is laid out by Kind => Type

So to use an ActivityStreams Video, you'd write

use activitystreams::object::Video;
let video = Video::new();

And to use an ActivityPub profile, you'd write

use activitystreams::object::{ApObject, Profile};
let inner = Profile::new();
let profile = ApObject::new(inner);

There's only one kind of Link

use activitystreams::link::Mention;
let mention = Mention::new();

Fields

Many fields on the provided types are wrapped in OneOrMany<> or have a type of AnyBase. This is because the activitystreams spec is very open as to what is considered a valid structure.

For example, the Object type in ActivityStreams has a summary field, which can either be represented as an xsd:string or an rdf:langString. It also states that the summary field is not functional, meaning that any number of xsd:string or rdf:langString, or a combination thereof, can be present. This library represents this as Option<OneOrMany<AnyString>>.

This resulting type is exactly specific enough to match the following valid ActivityStreams json, without matching any invalid json.

With no summary:

{}

With a string summary:

{
    "summary": "A string"
}

With an rdf langstring

{
    "summary": {
        "@value": "A string",
        "@language": "en"
    }
}

With multiple values

{
    "summary": [
        {
            "@value": "A string",
            "@language": "en"
        },
        "An xsd:string this time"
    ]
}

It may seem like interacting with these types might get unweildy, there are some custom methods implemented on the OneOrMany type depending on what's inside of it.

fn from_xsd_string<T>(&mut self, T) -> Self;
fn from_rdf_lang_string<T>(&mut self, T) -> Self;

fn as_single_xsd_string(&self) -> Option<&str>;
fn as_single_rdf_langstring(&self) -> Option<&RdfLangString>;

fn single_xsd_string(self) -> Option<String>;
fn single_rdf_lang_string(self) -> Option<RdfLangString>;

fn add_xsd_string<T>(&mut self, T) -> &mut Self;
fn add_rdf_lang_string<T>(&mut self, T) -> &mut Self;

These methods provide access to setting and fetching uniformly typed data, as well as deleting the data. In the setter methods, the type parameter T is bound by Into<String> or Into<RdfLangString>. This allows passing values to the method that can be converted into the types, rather than requiring the caller to perform the conversion.

Types like RdfLangString can be found in the primitives module. Unless you're building your own custom types, you shouldn't need to import them yourself. They each implement FromStr for parsing and Display to convert back to strings, as well as From and Into or TryFrom and TryInto for types you might expect them to (e.g. XsdNonNegativeInteger implements From<u64> and Into<u64>).

Traits

Since ActivityStreams is a heirarchical structure of data, it's represented as structs containing other structs. This means that the context field, which can be present on any ActivityStreams type, will be located in the innermost struct. In order to avoid writing code like ap_object.collection.object.base.context = Some(context()), this library provides traits that are automatically implmeneted for provided types.

For example, the BaseExt trait provides the following methods for context,

fn context(&self) -> Option<&OneOrMany<AnyBase>>;

fn set_context<T>(&mut self, context: T) -> &mut Self
where
    T: Into<AnyBase>;

fn set_many_contexts<I, T>(&mut self, items: I) -> &mut Self
where
    I: IntoIterator<Item = T>,
    T: Into<AnyBase>;

fn add_context<T>(&mut self, context: T) -> &mut Self
where
    T: Into<AnyBase>;

fn take_context(&mut self) -> Option<OneOrMany<AnyBase>>;
fn delete_context(&mut self) -> &mut Self;

For fields with more specific bounds, like id,

fn id(&self) -> Option<&XsdAnyUri>;
fn set_id(&mut self, XsdAnyUri) -> &mut Self;
fn take_id(&self) -> Option<XsdAnyUri>;
fn delete_id(&mut self) -> &mut Self;

The full list of extension traits that implement methods like these on types can be found in the prelude module. By using use activitystreams::prelude::*; all of the methods will be implemented for types containing their fields.

Markers

This library provides a number of traits, such as Object, Link, Actor, Activity, Collection, and CollectionPage. The majority of these traits exist solely to "mark" types, meaning they don't provide value, at runtime, but exist to add constraints to generics at compiletime.

If you want to make a function that manipulates an Activity, but not a normal object, you could bound the function like so:

use activitystreams::{base::BaseExt, context, markers::Activity, uri};

fn manipulator<T, Kind>(mut activity: T) -> Result<(), anyhow::Error>
where
    T: Activity + BaseExt<Kind>,
{
    activity
        .set_id(uri!("https://example.com"))
        .set_context(context());
    Ok(())
}

Kinds

This library has a set of unit structs that serialize and deserialize to strings. This is to enable different ActivityPub Object types to be deserialized into different Named structs. These can be found in activitystreams::objects::kind, and similar paths.

To build your own Person struct, for example, you could write

use activitystreams::actor::kind::PersonType;

#[derive(serde::Deserialize, serde::Serialize)]
pub struct MyPerson {
    // Do a rename since `type` is not a valid rust field name
    #[serde(rename = "type")]
    kind: PersonType,
}

And this type would only deserialize for JSON where "type":"Person"

Examples

Create

use activitystreams::{
    context,
    object::{ApObject, Video},
    prelude::*,
    uri,
};

fn main() -> Result<(), anyhow::Error> {
    let mut video = ApObject::new(Video::new());

    video
        .set_context(context())
        .set_id(uri!("https://example.com/@example/lions"))
        .set_media_type("video/webm".parse()?)
        .set_url(uri!("https://example.com/@example/lions/video.webm"))
        .set_summary("A cool video")
        .set_duration("PT4M20S".parse()?)
        .set_shares(uri!("https://example.com/@example/lions/video.webm#shares"));

    println!("Video, {:#?}", video);

    let s = serde_json::to_string(&video)?;

    println!("json, {}", s);

    let v: ApObject<Video> = serde_json::from_str(&s)?;

    println!("Video again, {:#?}", v);

    Ok(())
}

Parse

use activitystreams::{activity::ActorAndObject, prelude::*};

#[derive(Clone, Debug, serde::Deserialize, serde::Serialize)]
pub enum AcceptedTypes {
    Accept,
    Announce,
    Create,
    Delete,
    Follow,
    Reject,
    Update,
    Undo,
}

pub type AcceptedActivity = ActorAndObject<AcceptedTypes>;

pub fn handle_activity(activity: AcceptedActivity) -> Result<(), anyhow::Error> {
    println!("Actor: {:?}", activity.actor());
    println!("Object: {:?}", activity.object());

    match activity.kind() {
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Accept) => println!("Accept"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Announce) => println!("Announce"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Create) => println!("Create"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Delete) => println!("Delete"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Follow) => println!("Follow"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Reject) => println!("Reject"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Update) => println!("Update"),
        Some(AcceptedTypes::Undo) => println!("Undo"),
        None => return Err(anyhow::Error::msg("No activity type provided")),
    }

    Ok(())
}

static EXAMPLE_JSON: &str = r#"{"actor":"https://asonix.dog/users/asonix","object":"https://asonix.dog/users/asonix/posts/1","type":"Announce"}"#;

fn main() -> Result<(), anyhow::Error> {
    handle_activity(serde_json::from_str(EXAMPLE_JSON)?)
}

Contributing

Feel free to open issues for anything you find an issue with. Please note that any contributed code will be licensed under the GPLv3.

License

Copyright © 2020 Riley Trautman

ActivityStreams is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

ActivityStreams is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. This file is part of ActivityStreams.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with ActivityStreams. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.