Trying to wrap my head around webfinger..

my first thoughts about it were that a subject of acct:me@sour.is would have a listing of rel’s for the different accounts that are related to me (ie. yarn, salty, twitter, mastodon, etc…)

but maybe my thinking is at the wrong level.. that each of those accounts would be on a subject level and the rels are describing different aspects of that account. so i would have salty:acct:xuu@sour.is, twitter:acct:xuu, mastodon:acct:xuu@chaos.social, yarn:acct:xuu@ev.sour.is and then i could have a main acct:me@sour.is that links them together as aliases.

I found okta will do something similar with its accounts to show as okta:acct:user@domain so maybe I am on to something?

@prologic@twtxt.net That was exactly my thought at first too. but what do we put as the rel for salty account? since it is decentralized we dont have a set URL for machines to key off. so for example take the standard response from okta:

# http GET https://example.okta.com/.well-known/webfinger  resource==acct:bob
{
    "links": [
        {
            "href": "https://example.okta.com/sso/idps/OKTA?login_hint=bob#",
            "properties": {
                "okta:idp:type": "OKTA"
            },
            "rel": "http://openid.net/specs/connect/1.0/issuer",
            "titles": {
                "und": "example"
            }
        }
    ],
    "subject": "acct:bob"
}

It gives one link that follows the OpenID login. So the details are specific to the subject acct:bob.

Mastodons response:

{
  "subject": "acct:xuu@chaos.social",
  "aliases": [
    "https://chaos.social/@xuu",
    "https://chaos.social/users/xuu"
  ],
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
      "type": "text/html",
      "href": "https://chaos.social/@xuu"
    },
    {
      "rel": "self",
      "type": "application/activity+json",
      "href": "https://chaos.social/users/xuu"
    },
    {
      "rel": "http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/subscribe"
    }
  ]
}

it supplies a profile page and a self which are both specific to that account.

@prologic@twtxt.net Unfortunately the RFC’s are a bit light in this regard. While it makes mention of different kinds of accounts like mailto: or status services.. it never combines them. It does make mention of using redirects to forward a request to other webfingers to provide additional detail.

I am kinda partial to using salty:acct:me@sour.is, yarn:acct:xuu@txt.sour.is, mailto:me@sour.is that could redirect to a specific service. and a parent account acct:me@sour.is that would reference them in some way. either in properties or aliases.

@xuu@txt.sour.is that doesn’t seem to fit the spirit of the spec, at least by my read (I could be wrong obv). The example on Wikipedia’s webfinger page,

{
	"subject": "acct:bob@example.com",
	"aliases": [
		"https://www.example.com/~bob/"
	],
	"properties": {
		"http://example.com/ns/role": "employee"
	},
	"links": [{
			"rel": "http://webfinger.example/rel/profile-page",
			"href": "https://www.example.com/~bob/"
		},
		{
			"rel": "http://webfinger.example/rel/businesscard",
			"href": "https://www.example.com/~bob/bob.vcf"
		}
	]
}

and then the comparison with how mastodon uses webfinger,

{
    "subject": "acct:Mastodon@mastodon.social",
    "aliases": [
        "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon",
        "https://mastodon.social/users/Mastodon"
    ],
    "links": [
        {
            "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
            "type": "text/html",
            "href": "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon"
        },
        {
            "rel": "self",
            "type": "application/activity+json",
            "href": "https://mastodon.social/users/Mastodon"
        },
        {
            "rel": "http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/subscribe",
            "template": "https://mastodon.social/authorize_interaction?uri={uri}"
        }
    ]
}

suggests to me you want to leave the subject/acct bit as is (don’t add prefixes) and put extra information you care to include in the links section, where you’re free to define the rel URIs however you see fit. The notion here is that webfinger is offering a mapping from an account name to additional information about that account, so if anything you’d use a "subject": "acct:SALTY ACCOUNT_REPRESENTATION" line in the JSON to achieve what you’re saying if you don’t want to do that via links.

so in effect it would look something like this:

---
subject: acct:me@sour.is
aliases:
  - salty:me@sour.is
  - yarn:xuu@ev.sour.is
  - status:xuu@chaos.social
  - mailto:me@sour.is
---
subject: salty:me@sour.is
aliases:
  - acct:me@sour.is
links:
  - rel:    self
    type:   application/json+salty
    href:   https://ev.sour.is/inbox/01GAEMKXYJ4857JQP1MJGD61Z5
    properties:
        "http://salty.im/ns/nick":    xuu
        "http://salty.im/ns/display": Jon Lundy
        "http://salty.im/ns/pubkey":     kex140fwaena9t0mrgnjeare5zuknmmvl0vc7agqy5yr938vusxfh9ys34vd2p
---
subject: yarn:xuu@ev.sour.is
links:
  - rel: https://txt.sour.is/user/xuu
    properties:
        "https://sour.is/rel/redirect": https://txt.sour.is/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct%3Axuu%40txt.sour.is
---    
subject: status:xuu@chaos.social
links:
   - rel: http://joinmastodon.org#xuu%40chaos.social
     properties:
        "https://sour.is/rel/redirect": https://chaos.social/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct%3Axuu%40chaos.social
---
subject: mailto:me@sour.is
...

@prologic@twtxt.net that worked.. But took crazy long time