Microsub

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Microsub is a proposed standard for creating a new generation of social readers that decouples the management of subscriptions to feeds and the parsing/delivering content from the user interface and presentation of the content.

The broad goal of the specification is to split up the many pieces of older feed readers into smaller building blocks so that developers and designers can more closely focus on the individual pieces. It separates the plumbing piece of the problem from the design and user interface portion allowing for greater competition and plurality in the overall space. The split between the two additionally allows subscription lists to be portable between readers as well as allowing a person to resume reading posts where they left off when switching between readers.

The Microsub server provides for maintaining a subscription list of feeds, collecting and parsing posts from them (potentially using WebSub) while providing a consistent API so that Microsub clients can present the contents of the feeds/posts in a reader interface by fetching the most recent ones from the server. In addition to display and presentation of posts, the reader client can also potentially make decisions about how to interact with individual posts from within the reader itself.

Reader clients or apps can (optionally) use Micropub to post responses composed within the reader to the the website of the person reading the post and responding to it. These responses, which often include likes, reposts and/or comments, once posted to the person's site can in turn send Webmentions (aka notifications) to the site that was being responded to.

Servers and clients can potentially be directly integrated into websites or made as stand-alone web, mobile, or other applications.

A short discussion of Microsub can be heard on Aaron Parecki's Percolator podcast.

Articles


Clients

IndiePass

IndiePass (formerly Indigenous) is a set of in-development native iOS and Android Microsub reader apps.

iOS

Indigenous for iOS is a native iOS Microsub reader app built by Eddie Hinkle

Android

IndiePass for Android is a native Android Microsub reader app built by Kristof De Jaeger

 

Desktop

IndiePass for Desktop is built by Kristof De Jaeger using Electron. Source and releases are available at https://github.com/IndiePass/indiepass-desktop

Monocle

Monocle is a Microsub reader web app built by Aaron Parecki. If you have a Microsub server, you can use the hosted version at https://monocle.p3k.io

Together

Together a web-based Microsub reader, primarily developed by Grant Richmond. Source code at https://github.com/alltogethernow/web/ and an online at https://alltogethernow.io

Ekster Reader

Ekster Reader is a Microsub reader, running in a browser. It connects directly to a Microsub server without its own Microsub proxy backend. For this to work you do need a Microsub server that handles CORS headers, to allow access from the browser. This also applies for the IndieAuth endpoint. A version is hosted at https://reader.p83.nl/

Microsub Notifier

microsub notifier is a Microsub client built purely to send notifications of new content in any of your Microsub channels. Built by Grant Richmond is is hosted at https://microsub-notifier.tpxl.io

(needs screenshots!)

capjamesg's Microsub Client

capjamesg has built an open-sourced Microsub client with Python Flask. The client is connected to a Microsub server but use of the server is optional. Currently, the client is for personal use, but anyone can deploy their own version.

Servers

Aperture

  • Aperture, built by Aaron Parecki, is a Microsub server with no UI for rendering posts. This is intended to be a server only, and all rendering happens using Microsub clients. It is built in PHP with MySQL storage. Source on Github

Drupal IndieWeb Module

Dobrado

Micro.blog

  • Micro.blog can be used as a Microsub server. Channels are mapped to the built-in sections of Micro.blog like Timeline, Mentions, and Favorites.

Yarns

Ekster

Other Proxies

Proxies - not entire server(s), but implements Microsub server API wrapped around existing service(s):

Baffle

capjamesg's Microsub Server

  • capjamesg has developed a Microsub server using Python Flask and SQLite. The project contains both a Microsub server and a script that will let you poll all the feeds to which you are subscribed. The server is not open for registrations but the code is open-sourced for anyone to use on GitHub.

IndieWeb Examples

In Progress

IndieWebCamp Related Sessions


Getting Started

To use a Microsub app, your website will need to support IndieAuth and advertise a Microsub endpoint. Starting with a plain HTML home page, the steps below will walk you through getting set up so you can log in to an IndieWeb reader app.

Setting up IndieAuth

If you have WordPress or another website that has native IndieAuth support, that is your best option. Install the IndieAuth plugin in WordPress or your CMS.

If you are not using a CMS that has native IndieAuth support, you can use the steps below to delegate all the authentication to external services so that you can use it with a static site or any other project.

  • add a rel=me link to your GitHub profile
    • e.g. <a href="https://github.com/username" rel="me">username</a> on github
  • add the following tags to delegate your IndieAuth handling to indieauth.com
    • <link rel="authorization_endpoint" href="https://indieauth.com/auth">
    • <link rel="token_endpoint" href="https://tokens.indieauth.com/token">

Setting up Microsub

Libraries

Brainstorming

See Microsub-spec#Brainstorming

See Also

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