mention-app

This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.

A mention-app is a mobile app to handle mobile notifications of webmentions of a person's website.

This is a collection of notes for creating a mention-app. Feel free to add notes or suggestions. Aaron is working on the server and iOS implementation, but would love help with an Android version.

App UI

Design goals:

No registration
Should be able to open the app and start using immediately
As few options as possible

Main interface:

App Functionality

Setup

On first launch, app generates a UUID and registers itself with the server
App registers for an APNS token and sends to the server along with the UUID
When the user enters a feed URL, app sends the feed URL to the server
After the feed URL is saved, (or after the app is launched a second time), fetches the feed URL status and displays in the status box
Fetches the "system news" URL and displays the result in the news box

Future Launches

The next time the app launches, it should fetch the "system news" URL and display the results in the box
The app should register for push notifications and send its push token to the server on each launch

Launched via Push Notification

When the user launches the app by opening a push notification, the app should look for a "url" property in the payload of the push, and immediately launch a native system browser to that URL

DB Schema

devices

CREATE TABLE `devices` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `uuid` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `apns_production_token` varchar(255) DEFAULT '',
  `apns_sandbox_token` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `gcm_token` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_last_read` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `last_read_entry` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `uuid` (`uuid`)
)

subscriptions

CREATE TABLE `subscriptions` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `device_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `url` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_last_fetched` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `device_id` (`device_id`),
  KEY `url` (`url`)
)

entries

CREATE TABLE `entries` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `subscription_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `text` text,
  `url` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_sent` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `subscription` (`subscription_id`,`url`)
)

news

CREATE TABLE `news` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `featured` tinyint(1) DEFAULT '0',
  `text` text,
  `url` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `date_created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `featured` (`featured`,`date_created`)
)

API Methods

register device

uuid

set push token

uuid
apns_production_token OR apns_sandbox_token OR gcm_token

set subscription

uuid
url

check subscription status

uuid

fetch latest news item

uuid

verify PuSH subscription

called by the PuSH hub to verify this server's subscription to the PuSH feed

hub.challenge

handle PuSH notification

??

Cron Job

A cron job should run periodically to fetch subscription URLs in case they are not PuSH-enabled.

h-feed parsing

The parser will look for a list of h-entrys in the mentions feed.

What to look for in a mentions h-feed:

Summary: The h-entrys in a mentions feed should have identical data to the actual h-entrys that are the mentions (i.e. the data from parsing the h-entry at the permalink of the source).

Details:

In order to avoid sending repeated notifications for the same mentions, the unique identifier used for de-duplication will be:

the uid of the h-entry if present
the url of the h-entry if present
if no uid or url is present on the h-entry, the entry is considered invalid and no notification should be sent. this error should be reported back to the user in the logs.

notification UI brainstorming

The text of the notification will be the result of the comments-presentation algorithm, using the php-comments library.

Opening the push notification will launch a browser to a URL determined by:

the u-url property of the h-entry if present
if no u-url property on the h-entry, look for a u-in-reply-to property and use its value (e.g. even if it has an h-cite object on the u-in-reply-to property, the url of the h-cite should automatically be returned for the "value" of the u-in-reply-to)

Currently Available Solutions