Discovery of Open GNU Social instances

[pztrn]

Right now I have to go to settings and add instance by hand. Why do not request instance URL while adding account rather then current "Add another system" thing? Because right now you're propagate Quitter, and user have no choice between instances.

There is another idea, if you do not want to change current behaviour: why not to use gstools.org for fetching open instances list, so user will have a choice?

[yvolk]

1. @pztrn , first, thank you for raising this question. And second, it will not be resolved without Your help (or some other StatusNet activist when such appear :-) ). Generally people come to us ( AndStatus(1)@ Twitter, Quitter, pump.io...) and ask for compatibility with/visibility of the ONE system/"instance"...
2. Regarding promoting any specific StatusNet "instance" (or we better call them "GNU social"). Just yesterday I found this page: http://gnu.io/try/ - it currently shows 3 prominent servers and has a small link to the "List of independent StatusNet instances". I guess AndStatus should follow the same pattern: have the 3 servers preconfigured (one is there already, I hope to add 2 others in the next release...) and an option to add any other instance (implemented already through the Options menu + it's documented in English and in Russian at the FIRST AndStatus page that a new User sees).
   The main reason for having separate forms for adding "Microblogging system" and "AndStatus account" is that relation between them is one to many :-) E.g. I generally have in one AndStatus installation two or more accounts for each Microblogging system (one is usually for the "official" AndStatus account, another one - my personal account, the third - for testing... In Twitter I have separate personal accounts for Russian and for International audiences...
3. "StatusNet instance discovery" may be a real user acceptance booster for AndStatus and for the whole StatusNet community. I like this idea very much. One problem though: implementer needed ;-)
   Actually this is (and should be!) quite autonomous component so no deep knowledge of the AndStatus codebase is needed.
   BTW, AndStatus has large automatic testing suite, which tests both UI and deep buried components... try it, it's really fun!

[pztrn]

I will implement API for getting open instances on gstools side within this week, and I hope you would not say "NOOOOO" to JSON format :)

And excuse me my rudeness, I have no intention to write in Java, I have strong antipathy to this language. But I will be glad to test if someone implements it :)

As a suggestion for "adding another instance" thing on welcome screen - this should be put in separate popup window, so user will definetely read this. You should know how 95% of users reads manuals, license agreements, etc. :)

[yvolk]

Thanks, JSON format is Ok simply because all Microblogging Systems currently integrated with AndStatus use this format, so I got used to it :-)
Regarding simplifying addition of the new System, I guess we may add "Discover other StatusNet server" "button" to the "Add account" screen...

[pztrn]

Just for note: not StatusNet anymore, actually, it's officially GNU Social now :) I'll try to implement simple API for that today.

[yvolk]

Hi Stanislav, could you please change your AndStatus rating to high as we are now working on the solution about which you complained? ;-)

[yvolk]

@pztrn Are there any news on the GNU Social instances discovery API?

[pztrn]

Ye, sorry, got not much time for developing. I will implement it on this weekend.

[yvolk]

Thanks, there is no reason for any rush :-) API design is not an easy Architectural decision...

[europrobe]

I have a private instance on perup.net/majablog. I can't seem to add that in Andstatus however. If I remove the slash, it will accept the input, (but of course will not work anyway). Am I missing something? I don't have any experience seeing up gnu social instances. Thanks!

[yvolk]

@europrobe It looks like in the Microblogging system definition you only need to set:
host=perup.net
and
SSL=on
I see the problem in your config ( https://perup.net/api/statusnet/config.json ): "textlimit":"0" - I guess you should set it to some positive value...

[europrobe]

@yvolk Yeah, thanks, I got it working now. Now all I'm missing is the possibility to attach images to posts.
Thanks!

[pztrn]

http://gstools.org/api/get_open_instances check this out :) Read http://gstools.org/api/ about error handling, I've tried to make it pretty simple.

[yvolk]

@pztrn I see the time came for me to implement this discovery request into AndStatus.
From the first look everything looks good. The questions are:

1. How do this list is composed? I mean, how does your system discover that "Open instances", what is a "golden source" of this information?
2. How often is the list updated?
3. And the most interesting for me: Do really so few open instances exist?

[pztrn]

1. This list is composed on voluteer basis, plugin not yet merged with gnusocial mainline. So if instance admin wants to be listed in this list - he must install a plugin and add his instance to database.
2. Right now updater performs its actions once per hour, and I see no intentions to change it.
3. Apparently there are more of them, but there is no single directory of them 😄 Possibly in future GSTools will be that directory, but not now.

[yvolk]

Got it, thank you.
So I can join my list of AndStatus preconfigured servers with this one and present it to a User for selection. Maybe this use case will stimulate other open GNU Social instance owners to join this list/install the plugin...
Starting implementation...

[pztrn]

Great news! Thanks!

[yvolk]

@pztrn I see a line like this: "'instance_address': 'http://quitter.es', 'ssl_enabled': 1"
"http" in URL and SSL is enabled 8-o
Q1. Is this a data error (conflicting values)
Q2. Why at all we may need 'ssl_enabled' if 'instance_address' already has this information?

[pztrn]

Oh, unintended bug :)

1. No data error.
2. 'ssl_enabled' can be used for sorting, e.g. when user wants to see only ssl enabled instances. This is less time consuming operation (you can compare it as bool) than searching for substring :)

BTW, thanks for asking, I see a little bug here - on ssl enabled instance URL is still in HTTP. Will fix it tomorrow.

[yvolk]

The Discovery of Open GNU Social instances implemented.
Works like a charm :-)
Now we need to more Open instances to be registered in this service...

The screenshot below shows only instances, which were not imported into AndStatus on this particular device yet. Names are automatically modified to fit into AndStatus.

[yvolk]

This works