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Federation

BookWyrm uses the ActivityPub protocol to send and receive user activity between other BookWyrm instances and other services that implement ActivityPub. To handle book data, BookWyrm has a handful of extended Activity types which are not part of the standard, but are legible to other BookWyrm instances.

Activities and Objects

Users and relationships

User relationship interactions follow the standard ActivityPub spec.

  • Follow: request to receive statuses from a user, and view their statuses that have followers-only privacy
  • Accept: approves a Follow and finalizes the relationship
  • Reject: denies a Follow
  • Block: prevent users from seeing one another's statuses, and prevents the blocked user from viewing the actor's profile
  • Update: updates a user's profile and settings
  • Delete: deactivates a user
  • Undo: reverses a Follow or Block

Activities

  • Create/Status: saves a new status in the database.
  • Delete/Status: Removes a status
  • Like/Status: Creates a favorite on the status
  • Announce/Status: Boosts the status into the actor's timeline
  • Undo/*,: Reverses a Like or Announce

Collections

User's books and lists are represented by OrderedCollection

Statuses

BookWyrm is focused on book reading activities - it is not a general-purpose messaging application. For this reason, BookWyrm only accepts status Create activities if they are:

  • Direct messages (i.e., Notes with the privacy level direct, which mention a local user),
  • Related to a book (of a custom status type that includes the field inReplyToBook),
  • Replies to existing statuses saved in the database

All other statuses will be received by the instance inbox, but by design will not be delivered to user inboxes or displayed to users.

Custom Object types

With the exception of Note, the following object types are used in Bookwyrm but are not currently provided with a custom JSON-LD @context extension IRI. This is likely to change in future to make them true deserialisable JSON-LD objects.

Note

Within BookWyrm a Note is constructed according to the ActivityStreams vocabulary, however Notes can only be created as direct messages or as replies to other statuses. As mentioned above, this also applies to incoming Notes.

Review

A Review is a status in response to a book (indicated by the inReplyToBook field), which has a title, body, and numerical rating between 0 (not rated) and 5.

Example:

{
    "id": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/review/2",
    "type": "Review",
    "published": "2023-06-30T21:43:46.013132+00:00",
    "attributedTo": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker",
    "content": "<p>This is an enjoyable book with great characters.</p>",
    "to": ["https://example.net/user/library_lurker/followers"],
    "cc": [],
    "replies": {
        "id": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/review/2/replies",
        "type": "OrderedCollection",
        "totalItems": 0,
        "first": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/review/2/replies?page=1",
        "last": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/review/2/replies?page=1",
        "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
        },
        "summary": "Spoilers ahead!",
        "tag": [],
        "attachment": [],
        "sensitive": true,
    "inReplyToBook": "https://example.net/book/1",
    "name": "What a cracking read",
    "rating": 4.5,
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}
Comment

A Comment on a book mentions a book and has a message body, reading status, and progress indicator.

Example:

{
    "id": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/comment/9",
    "type": "Comment",
    "published": "2023-06-30T21:43:46.013132+00:00",
    "attributedTo": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker",
    "content": "<p>This is a very enjoyable book so far.</p>",
    "to": ["https://example.net/user/library_lurker/followers"],
    "cc": [],
    "replies": {
        "id": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/comment/9/replies",
        "type": "OrderedCollection",
        "totalItems": 0,
        "first": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/comment/9/replies?page=1",
        "last": "https://example.net/user/library_lurker/comment/9/replies?page=1",
        "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
        },
        "summary": "Spoilers ahead!",
        "tag": [],
        "attachment": [],
        "sensitive": true,
    "inReplyToBook": "https://example.net/book/1",
    "readingStatus": "reading",
    "progress": 25,
    "progressMode": "PG",
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}
Quotation

A quotation (aka "quote") has a message body, an excerpt from a book including position as a page number or percentage indicator, and mentions a book.

Example:

{
    "id": "https://example.net/user/mouse/quotation/13",
    "url": "https://example.net/user/mouse/quotation/13",
    "inReplyTo": null,
    "published": "2020-05-10T02:38:31.150343+00:00",
    "attributedTo": "https://example.net/user/mouse",
    "to": [
        "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
        ],
    "cc": [
        "https://example.net/user/mouse/followers"
        ],
    "sensitive": false,
    "content": "I really like this quote",
    "type": "Quotation",
    "replies": {
        "id": "https://example.net/user/mouse/quotation/13/replies",
        "type": "Collection",
        "first": {
            "type": "CollectionPage",
            "next": "https://example.net/user/mouse/quotation/13/replies?only_other_accounts=true&page=true",
            "partOf": "https://example.net/user/mouse/quotation/13/replies",
            "items": []
            }
        },
    "inReplyToBook": "https://example.net/book/1",
    "quote": "To be or not to be, that is the question.",
    "position": 50,
    "positionMode": "PCT",
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}

Custom Objects

Work

A particular book, a "work" in the FRBR sense.

Example:

{
    "id": "https://bookwyrm.social/book/5988",
    "type": "Work",
    "authors": [
        "https://bookwyrm.social/author/417"
    ],
    "first_published_date": null,
    "published_date": null,
    "title": "Piranesi",
    "sort_title": null,
    "subtitle": null,
    "description": "**From the *New York Times* bestselling author of *Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell*, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.",
    "languages": [],
    "series": null,
    "series_number": null,
    "subjects": [
        "English literature"
    ],
    "subject_places": [],
    "openlibrary_key": "OL20893680W",
    "librarything_key": null,
    "goodreads_key": null,
    "attachment": [
        {
            "url": "https://bookwyrm.social/images/covers/10226290-M.jpg",
            "type": "Image"
        }
    ],
    "lccn": null,
    "editions": [
        "https://bookwyrm.social/book/5989"
    ],
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}
Edition

A particular manifestation of a Work, in the FRBR sense.

Example:

{
    "id": "https://bookwyrm.social/book/5989",
    "lastEditedBy": "https://example.net/users/rat",
    "type": "Edition",
    "authors": [
        "https://bookwyrm.social/author/417"
    ],
    "first_published_date": null,
    "published_date": "2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00",
    "title": "Piranesi",
    "sort_title": null,
    "subtitle": null,
    "description": "Piranesi's house is no ordinary building; its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others.",
    "languages": [
        "English"
    ],
    "series": null,
    "series_number": null,
    "subjects": [],
    "subject_places": [],
    "openlibrary_key": "OL29486417M",
    "librarything_key": null,
    "goodreads_key": null,
    "isfdb": null,
    "attachment": [
        {
            "url": "https://bookwyrm.social/images/covers/50202953._SX318_.jpg",
            "type": "Image"
        }
    ],
    "isbn_10": "1526622424",
    "isbn_13": "9781526622426",
    "oclc_number": null,
    "asin": null,
    "pages": 272,
    "physical_format": null,
    "publishers": [
        "Bloomsbury Publishing Plc"
    ],
    "work": "https://bookwyrm.social/book/5988",
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}

Shelf

A user's book collection. By default, every user has a to-read, reading, read, and stopped-reading shelf which are used to track reading progress. Users may create an unlimited number of additional shelves with their own ids.

Example

{
    "id": "https://example.net/user/avid_reader/books/extraspecialbooks-5",
    "type": "Shelf",
    "totalItems": 0,
    "first": "https://example.net/user/avid_reader/books/extraspecialbooks-5?page=1",
    "last": "https://example.net/user/avid_reader/books/extraspecialbooks-5?page=1",
    "name": "Extra special books",
    "owner": "https://example.net/user/avid_reader",
    "to": [
        "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
    ],
    "cc": [
        "https://example.net/user/avid_reader/followers"
    ],
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}

List

A collection of books that may have items contributed by users other than the one who created the list.

Example:

{
    "id": "https://example.net/list/1",
    "type": "BookList",
    "totalItems": 0,
    "first": "https://example.net/list/1?page=1",
    "last": "https://example.net/list/1?page=1",
    "name": "My cool list",
    "owner": "https://example.net/user/avid_reader",
    "to": [
        "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
    ],
    "cc": [
        "https://example.net/user/avid_reader/followers"
    ],
    "summary": "A list of books I like.",
    "curation": "curated",
    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
}

Activities

  • Create: Adds a shelf or list to the database.
  • Delete: Removes a shelf or list.
  • Add: Adds a book to a shelf or list.
  • Remove: Removes a book from a shelf or list.

Alternative Serialization

Because BookWyrm uses custom object types that aren't listed in the standard ActivityStreams Vocabulary, some statuses are transformed into standard types when sent to or viewed by non-BookWyrm services. Reviews are converted into Articles, and Comments and Quotations are converted into Notes, with a link to the book and the cover image attached.

In future this may be done with JSON-LD type arrays instead.

Other extensions

Webfinger

Bookwyrm uses the Webfinger standard to identify and disambiguate fediverse actors. The Webfinger documentation on the Mastodon project provides a good overview of how Webfinger is used.

HTTP Signatures

Bookwyrm uses and requires HTTP signatures for all POST requests. GET requests are not signed by default, but if Bookwyrm receives a 403 response to a GET it will re-send the request, signed by the default server user. This usually will have a user id of https://example.net/user/bookwyrm.instance.actor

publicKey id

In older versions of Bookwyrm the publicKey.id was incorrectly listed in request headers as https://example.net/user/username#main-key. As of v0.6.3 the id is now listed correctly, as https://example.net/user/username/#main-key. In most ActivityPub implementations this will make no difference as the URL will usually resolve to the same place.

NodeInfo

Bookwyrm uses the NodeInfo standard to provide statistics and version information for each instance.

Further Documentation

See docs.joinbookwyrm.com/ for more documentation.