Today I drafted a SiloAPI class in indieweb-toolkit. The idea is that it gives an easy way to interact with different Silo API's. In some ways this is a bad idea, because all API's work different and have different capabilities, but I like the idea, even if it's bad.

One API call that is available for both Twitter, Instagram and Facebook is to create a like. So that's where I focussed on first. Today, I made SiloAPI a wrapper for the TwitterOAuth PHP library, and it now supports ::like() just like micropub::like(). You still need to pass in the name of the silo though, but maybe I'll detecting the silo from the URL later.

siloapi::setToken('twitter', [
  'consumer_key'       => 'xxx',
  'consumer_secret'    => 'xxx',
  'oauth_token'        => 'xxx',
  'oauth_token_secret' => 'xxx',
]);

siloapi::like('https://twitter.com/_/status/123456', 'twitter');

Then I realised that Brid.gy probably can do this for me too, since it already syndicates my Tweets for me when I ask for it. So I just made my Micropub endpoint call Brid.gy publish for every like-of that is a twitter-URL.

I will add to SiloAPI though, because I want to autolike to Instagram too!

Today is a weird day. Fixed a lot of things, but also did kinda useless things. (I learned more about HTTP requests by trying to create a Micropub request using netcat, and at some point, I was chatting with myself in two Terminal windows with nc -l localhost 8080 in one and nc localhost 8080 in the other, completely by accident.)

Then it was 1:30 at night.

Earlier on in this series, I fixed my repost context. These contexts where based on a .json file I exported with my whole Twitter archive. A few days ago I made XRay look up likes for me. Today, I retweeted someone, and since .json files don't magically appear on your server (luckily), it didn't show any repost context.

So I combined the two and now XRay fetches the repost context for me. I don't use the .json file anymore, but keep the data the same way I keep likes: in a refs field.

And then it was 2:00 at night. I'm going to bed.

Today I extended my new Indieweb Toolkit with a Micropub helper class. This allows you to easily send Micropub requests from your PHP code. Here’s an example:

// Set URL and access token of the endpoint to use
micropub::setEndpoint('http://yoursite.com/micropub', 'xxx');

micropub::reply('http://example.com/a-nice-post', "Oh what a post!");
micropub::like('http://example.com/another-post');
micropub::rsvp('http://example.com/an-event', 'maybe');

$newURL = micropub::post([
  'name' => 'Custom posts are possible!',
  'content' => 'This is a story about (...)',
  'category' => ['story', 'custom'],
  'mp-slug' => 'custom-posts-are-possible',
  'mp-syndicate-to' => 'https://twitter.com/example',
]);

go($newURL);

Note that this only creates posts, and relies havily on the server you are making requests to. The mp-syndicate-to in the above example indicates that the remote server needs to post the entry to Twitter also, this helper doesn’t do a thing for that.

A drop-in Micropub endpoint is hard, because every site stores it’s data different, but I intend to extend this toolkit so that the different parts involved will be easier. (De facto making my own code more re-usable.)

Posted this post with use of todays code :D

With the recent events in the USA, I’ve decided that I want to move away from having data on American servers as much as possible. The first thing I want to tackle in that area is my e-mail. Although I do have an address at seblog.nl, I still just redirect it to Gmail.

My computer is currently in the process of backing up my main Gmail. I documented how I do it on the Indieweb Wiki:

Gmvault seems to be very simple and straight forward. It's on the command line, so it's scary for some users, but it does a good job of describing what it does. I did the following on my Mac, and since I can't remember installing pip, I think this works out of the box:

• sudo pip install --upgrade pip
• sudo pip install gmvault
• gmvault sync example@gmail.com
• Gmvault prompts for OAuth, with a description. Press enter to open the browser, and you have to make sure you are logged in at that browser to the Gmail account.
• Do the OAuth in de browser and copy the key. Paste it in the Terminal
• Gmvault does things! I got 6351 mails out of an old account in 16m 14s. It creates a folder called 'gmvault-db' in your home folder, with (in /db/) folders for every month. In those folders are, per e-mail, an '[id].meta' and an '[id].eml.gz'. The .meta is a JSON with info from Gmail (labels/tags, subject) and the .eml.gz is a gzipped .eml, which is just the plain-text e-mail with all the headers.

Having the data is just one step. I will need to think about how I want to manage my e-mail in the future. For now I’m on Gmail still, but I am making plans.

To make today a bit more IndieWeb-relevant (e-mail is not web), I backed Micro.blog, because today is the last day of their Kickstarter campaign.

Although I really like that the project gives Indieweb a lot of attention, it felt wrong to only give to Micro.blog. So I also backed Aaron Parecki with the same amount, for his ongoing 100daysofindieweb. I use a lot of things he made or did first.

Today I hacked my own site. I don't want to give details now, because it's late and it needs a proper write-up, but I will soon. It is fixed now. This post gets updated with a link to a more detailed article when it’s there.

When can one officially put ‘hacker’ in one’s Twitter bio? I think I’m close.

Update: I wrote the post! It's here.