API fetch of remote statuses

[rfinnie]

How do you load a remote instance's status via your own instance's API, the equivalent of pasting a status URL into the Mastodon search field so that your local instance then knows about it?

Ultimately my goal is to boost an arbitrary status by its upstream URL, but the /api/v1/statuses/:id/reblog method's :id only accepts local IDs, i.e. the local instance already needs to know about the remote status and be in the local format https://local.example.com/@user@remote.example.com/12345. Thank you.

[Dragolone]

Use the search endpoint with resolve=true. It's the same call the web UI makes when it opens a pasted URL:

curl -G "https://local.example.com/api/v2/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "q=https://remote.example.com/@user/12345" \
  -d type=statuses -d resolve=true -d limit=1

Your instance fetches the status if it doesn't already have it, and returns its local copy. statuses[0].id is the local ID the reblog endpoint needs:

curl -X POST "https://local.example.com/api/v1/statuses/$LOCAL_ID/reblog" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

Two things to watch for:

• resolve needs a valid user token. With a missing or invalid one you get a 401: "Search queries that resolve remote resources are not supported without authentication". The scopes you need are read:search and write:statuses.
• If your instance can't fetch the URL (for example, a private post it doesn't already know about), statuses comes back empty with no error, so check for that before using statuses[0].

I traced this through the Mastodon source and confirmed the 401 against mastodon.social, but I don't have an account to run the full search-and-boost myself. Let me know if it behaves differently on your instance.

Hope this helps!