WebFinger
{{short description|Protocol for the discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI}}
WebFinger is a protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF in RFC 7033 that allows for discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI.{{cite web
| url = http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7033
| title = RFC 7033: WebFinger
| first1 = Paul E. | last1 = Jones | first2 = Gonzalo | last2 = Salgueiro | first3 = Michael B. | last3 = Jones
| first4 = Joseph | last4 = Smarr |date=September 2013
}} Information about a person might be discovered via an acct: URI, for example, which is a URI that looks like an email address.
WebFinger is specified as the discovery protocol for OpenID Connect,{{Cite web |title=Final: OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0 incorporating errata set 1 |url=https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-discovery-1_0.html |access-date=2022-12-19 |website=openid.net}} which is a protocol that allows one to more easily log in to various sites on the Internet.{{Cite web |date=2011-08-01 |title=OpenID Connect {{!}} OpenID |url=https://openid.net/connect/ |access-date=2022-12-19 |language=en-US}}
The WebFinger protocol is used by federated software, such as GNU social,{{cn|date=March 2023}} Diaspora,{{Cite web |last=Clemens |date=2011-09-17 |title=How Diaspora Connects Users |url=http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2011/09/17/how-diaspora-connects-users/ |access-date=2022-12-19 |website=Sarah Mei |language=en-US}} or Mastodon,{{Cite web |title=WebFinger - Mastodon documentation |url=https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/webfinger/ |access-date=2022-12-19 |website=docs.joinmastodon.org |language=en-us}} to discover users on federated nodes and pods, as well as the remoteStorage protocol.[https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-dejong-remotestorage/ remoteStorage protocol draft at the IETF website.]
As a historical note, the name "WebFinger" is derived from the old ARPANET Finger protocol, but it is a very different protocol designed for HTTP.[http://hueniverse.com/2009/08/20/introducing-webfinger/ Introducing WebFinger]
The protocol payload is represented in JSON format.
Example
= Basic example with profile page and business card =
Client request:
GET /.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct%3Abob%40example.com HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Server response:
{
"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"
}
]
}
= Usage on Mastodon =
On Mastodon, any federated servers can look up users by sending a request to the WebFinger endpoint on other servers. Here is an example for the user@Mastodon@mastodon.social:
Client request:
GET /.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct%3AMastodon%40mastodon.social HTTP/1.1
Host: mastodon.social
Server response:
{
"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}"
}
]
}
See also
References
External links
- [https://webfinger.net/ webfinger.net community site]
- [http://www.packetizer.com/webfinger/ WebFinger information and open source software]
- [https://github.com/sabre-io/webfinger sabre/webfinger server implementation] by [https://sabre.io/ sabre.io]
- [https://github.com/cloudsecurityalliance/webfinger-cloudflare-worker webfinger Cloudflare worker] by [https://seifried.org/ Kurt Seifried]
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