Based on django-activitypub-bot, this is a server that allows the seamless following of ActivityPub hashtags as bot accounts, for smaller instances that may not see these posts, or implementations that do not allow for following hashtags directly. The "main" instance is hosted at Hashtag.place
Assumptions:
- You have an existing web server serving a site under a domain name that you'd like to use for an ActivityPub actor, with root (superuser) access.
- These instructions are for a server running Ubuntu Linux, with the nginx web server.
You need Python 3.9 or later to run this.
Clone this repository (I cloned it into /srv/activitypub, so that's what these instructions will use), and install the requirements, with
pip install -r requirements.txt
It's a good idea to set up a virtual environment to do this in.
I set up a virtual environment in /srv/activitypub/venv.
Make sure you activate the virtual environment after creating it!
Copy activitypub_bot/settings.py.dist to activitypub_bot/settings.py, and fill in the settings, following the instructions in that file.
Copy the files in systemd_services to /etc/systemd/system, and enable them:
Copy gunicorn.conf.py.dist to gunicorn.conf.py and change it if you used different paths for the repository or the virtual environment.
Run python manage.py migrate to set up the database.
Enable the services:
systemctl enable activitypub_huey.service activitypub.service activitypub.socket
For each domain you want to run ActivityPub on, the server needs to handle requests to the URL /.well-known/webfinger and anything under /activitypub.
(You can replace /activitypub with something else if you want).
Add the following rules to each nginx config that handles domains you want to run ActivityPub on:
server {
# ... your existing config
location ~ /activitypub/static {
rewrite ^/activitypub/static/(.*)$ /$1 break;
root /srv/activitypub/public/static;
}
location ~ /activitypub {
include proxy_params;
proxy_pass http://unix:/run/activitypub.sock;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
}
location = /.well-known/webfinger {
include proxy_params;
proxy_pass http://unix:/run/activitypub.sock;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
}
}
Reload nginx's config:
systemctl reload nginx
It's useful to create superuser login details for the admin interface:
python manage.py createsuperuser
If everything is set up properly, https://{DOMAIN}/activitypub/admin will show you the Django admin login screen.
When an ActivityPub message is received, it's handled by a series of subclasses of bot.inbox.AbstractInboxHandler.
For an activity with Type: "ActivityType", the corresponding method handle_ActivityType(activity) on each inbox handler will be called.
Django apps can register a new inbox handler class with bot.inbox.register_inbox_handler(cls, spec).
should_handle is either a callable of the form spec(actor, activity) which should return a boolean dictating whether the class should handle this activity received by this actor, or it should be a dictionary with keys username and domain specifying the usernames, domains, or both, whose inboxes this class should handle.
If should_handle is not given, then the handler is called for every activity.
There is a built-in inbox handler, bot.inbox.InboxHandler, which manages Follow and Like activities.
You could define an inbox handler which sends you an email whenever a Mention activity is received.
The specs are good!
The ActivityPub protocol specification gives a description of how interactions work.