Viewing other people's public data

[bytesnz]

Howdy all.

I have been starting to use Recipe Boss (https://recipes.bhdouglass.com/) and been thinking about the public folder in remotestorage. I was wanting to make my recipes publicly available through Recipe Boss (with the idea, youcouod then import a recipe into your own remote storage if you were connected to one).

Is there a URL standard for accessing someone else’s public data through an app? For instance something like recipes.bhdouglass.com/~user!server.com/recipes for user@server.com’s recipes (not using @ as it’s reserved).

The extension of this question is what are thoughts about changing/extending the current JavaScript library to access another user’s public folder?

[raucao]

@bytesnz

Is there a URL standard for accessing someone else’s public data through an app? For instance something like recipes.bhdouglass.com/~user!server.com/recipes for user@server.com’s recipes (not using @ as it’s reserved).

I don’t think there is one.

@bytesnz

The extension of this question is what are thoughts about changing/extending the current JavaScript library to access another user’s public folder?

Interestingly, in the early days of rs.js, there was a foreignClient (IIRC the name), analogue to privateClient and publicClient. I don’t remember why it was removed. Maybe @michielbdejong, @galfert or someone else does?

Given that it doesn’t break anything else, I don’t see why a PR proposing a new remote client couldn’t be merged upstream.

[rosano]

@bytesnz

Is there a URL standard for accessing someone else’s public data through an app? For instance something like recipes.bhdouglass.com/~user!server.com/recipes for user@server.com’s recipes (not using @ as it’s reserved).

I always imagined there would need to be an aggregator or server-side component for viewing other people’s data, but this sounds interesting because the app that publishes the data knows where things would be stored and can thus function as an aggregator even though there’s no server; would also need to make sure that different apps operating on the same data publish to the same location. If there was a shared contacts data module, then you could see the ‘recipes’ of everyone you ‘follow’—could be a nice way to springboard social graphs. Also maybe the @ symbol after the url hostname wouldn’t need to be reserved as it only has meaning before?

[bytesnz]

@raucao

I don’t think there is one.

Would it be something that would be considered for the documentation? Just thinking it could be good to have a reasonably standard way to access other peoples data (could be very app-specific though.

@raucao

Given that it doesn’t break anything else, I don’t see why a PR proposing a new remote client couldn’t be merged upstream.

Cool. Might, if I get some time have a look into the code a bit more.

[bytesnz]

@rosano

If there was a shared contacts data module, then you could see the ‘recipes’ of everyone you ‘follow’—could be a nice way to springboard social graphs.

Yeah definitely. It also fits in nicely with ActivityPub, so you could see when people publish new recipes

@rosano

Also maybe the @ symbol after the url hostname wouldn’t need to be reserved as it only has meaning before?

You are correct. I had in my head that I had had a browser treat an @ in the path as a just username, but just checked and it was fine (RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax).

[rosano]

@bytesnz

Would it be something that would be considered for the documentation? Just thinking it could be good to have a reasonably standard way to access other peoples data (could be very app-specific though.

As I understand, this might really a question about schemas or interoperability, and how to store/format data. This has been discussed in different ways and the canonical solution for remoteStorage would be data modules. See the discussion in Public protocols as well.

[bytesnz]

@rosano

As I understand, this might really a question about schemas or interoperability, and how to store/format data. This has been discussed in different ways and the canonical solution for remoteStorage would be data modules. See the discussion in Public protocols as well.

No, more of a question parallel to that discussion. This is on individual web apps accessing data from other remotestorage instances/users. “other” being ones that the app isn’t connected to. “data” being the apps data (recipes for recipeboss, or notes for hyperdraft etc). The data modules/public protocols discussion is more on different apps accessing the same data (using the data modules).