This project is an implementation of the Webmention protocol. It allows the webmention receiving service to be run separately from the blogging software or website environment, making it easier to manage and integrate with other services.
Say you have a statically-generated website using Jekyll or something similar, you can add the appropriate <link>
tag pointing to this service, and now you have Webmentions enabled on your static site!
<link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.io/example.com/webmention" />
The Webmention protocol also supports specifying the endpoint in the headers,
Link: <https://webmention.io/example.com/webmention>; rel="webmention"
<link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.io/example.com/webmention" />
This service provides an API for returning a list of pages that have linked to a given page. For example:
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?target=https://indieweb.org
{
"type": "feed",
"name": "Webmentions",
"children": [
{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Tantek Çelik",
"url": "http://tantek.com/",
"photo": "http://tantek.com/logo.jpg"
},
"url": "http://tantek.com/2013/112/t2/milestone-show-indieweb-comments-h-entry-pingback",
"published": "2013-04-22T15:03:00-07:00",
"wm-received": "2013-04-25T17:09:33-07:00",
"wm-id": 900,
"content": {
"text": "Another milestone: @eschnou automatically shows #indieweb comments with h-entry sent via pingback http://eschnou.com/entry/testing-indieweb-federation-with-waterpigscouk-aaronpareckicom-and--62-24908.html",
"html": "Another milestone: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/eschnou\">@eschnou<\/a> automatically shows #indieweb comments with h-entry sent via pingback <a href=\"http:\/\/eschnou.com\/entry\/testing-indieweb-federation-with-waterpigscouk-aaronpareckicom-and--62-24908.html\">http:\/\/eschnou.com\/entry\/testing-indieweb-federation-with-waterpigscouk-aaronpareckicom-and--62-24908.html<\/a>"
}
}
]
}
You can include a parameter to limit the returned links to mentions of a specific type:
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?target=https://indieweb.org&wm-property=in-reply-to
or request multiple types by repeating the query parameter:
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?target=https://indieweb.org&wm-property[]=in-reply-to&wm-property[]=rsvp
The full list of recognized properties is below:
This is useful for retrieving mentions from a post if you've changed the URL.
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?target[]=https://indieweb.org/a-blog-post&target[]=https://indieweb.org/a-different-post
You can also find all links to your domain:
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?domain=indiewebcamp.com&token=xxxxx
(You will see your account's token when you sign in.)
You can optionally add a since
parameter to return new webmentions as of a certain date. This is useful to poll for new webmentions you haven't seen yet.
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?domain=indiewebcamp.com&token=xxxxx&since=2017-06-01T10:00:00-0700
With no parameters, the API will return all links to any site in your account:
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions?token=xxxxxx
You can choose the sorting mechanism to return the list of mentions. The following options are supported:
sort-by=created
(default) - Sort by the date the mention was created in the webmention.io database.sort-by=updated
- Sort by the updated date of the page, as seen by webmention.io (not the date the post reports in its microformats data).sort-by=published
- Sort by the published date as reported by the linking page. Some pages don't include published date so this will fall back to created date if published is not present.sort-by=rsvp
- Sort by RSVP value, in the following order: "no", "interested", "maybe", "yes".By default, results are returned in descending order. You can control the ordering with the sort-dir
parameter:
sort-dir=down
(default) - Newest first, RSVP "yes" firstsort-dir=up
- Oldest first, RSVP "no" firstBasic paging is supported by using the per-page
and page
parameters. For example,
?per-page=20&page=0
first page of 20 results?per-page=20&page=1
second page of 20 resultsThe default number of results per page is 20. Results are always sorted newest first.
You can use the since
or since_id
parameters to find new mentions retrieved by the service.
since=2017-06-01T10:00:00-0700
- pass a full timestamp to the since
parameter to return links created after that date. This corresponds to the date the link was created in the webmention.io service, not the published date that the page reports.since_id=1000
- pass an ID to return links with a greater IDThe API also supports JSONP so you can use it to show pingbacks on your own sites via JavaScript. Simply add a parameter jsonp
to the API call, for example, https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?jsonp=f&target=https%3A%2F%2Fwebmention.io
You can change /mentions
to /mentions.atom
to receive your results in the Atom format:
GET https://webmention.io/api/mentions.atom?token=xxxxxx
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<id>https://webmention.io/api/mentions.atom</id>
<title>Mentions</title>
<updated>2013-04-25T17:09:33-07:00</updated>
<link href="https://webmention.io/api/mentions.atom"/>
<author>
<name>webmention.io</name>
</author>
<entry>
<title>tantek.com mentioned /webmention</title>
<id>https://webmention.io/api/mention/8675309</id>
<summary>http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comment-thread mentioned http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention</summary>
<updated>2013-04-25T17:09:33-07:00</updated>
<content type="xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p><a href="http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comment-thread">http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comment-thread</a> mentioned <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention">http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention</a></p>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
The pingback system is a way for a blog to be automatically notified when other Web sites link to it. It is entirely transparent to the linking author, requiring no user intervention to work, and operates on principles of automatic discovery of everything that it needs to know.
A sample blog post involving pingback might go like this:
Read the full protocol here: http://www.hixie.ch/specs/pingback/pingback
Webmention is a modern alternative to Pingback. It's analogous to the Pingback protocol except does not use XML-RPC and is much easier to implement. This project also includes a simple API for converting XML-RPC Pingbacks to Webmentions and forwarding the request on to your own site.
Using Webmention.io in this mode does not require an registration, and this service does not store any of the information. The Pingback request is simply forwarded on to your server as a Webmention.
To use, add a Pingback header like the following:
<link rel="pingback" href="https://webmention.io/webmention?forward=https://example.com/webmention" />
Any Pingbacks received will be forwarded on to the specified Webmention endpoint. It is up to you to handle the Webmention and return an expected result. The Webmention result will be converted to a Pingback result and passed back to the sender.
GET http://example.com/post/1000
<html>
<head>
<title>Example Post 1000</title>
<link rel="pingback" href="https://webmention.io/webmention?forward=http://example.com/webmention" />
...
POST https://webmention.io/webmention?forward=http://example.com/webmention
Content-Type: application/xml
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<methodCall>
<methodName>pingback.ping</methodName>
<params>
<param>
<value>
<string>http://aaronparecki.com/notes/2013/02/16/1/little-printer</string>
</value>
</param>
<param>
<value>
<string>http://example.com/post/1000</string>
</value>
</param>
</params>
</methodCall>
POST http://example.com/webmention
Content-Type: application/x-www-url-form-encoded
source=https://aaronparecki.com/2013/02/16/2/little-printer&
target=http://example.com/post/1000
HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
Content-Type: application/json
{
"result": "Webmention was successful"
}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/xml
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<methodResponse>
<params>
<param>
<value>
<string>Pingback from https://aaronparecki.com/2013/02/16/2/little-printer to http://example.com/post/1000 was successful!</string>
</value>
</param>
</params>
</methodResponse>
Webmention errors are converted to Pingback errors as well! For example,
{
"error": "no_link_found"
}
Is converted to:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<methodResponse>
<fault>
<value>
<struct>
<member>
<name>faultCode</name>
<value><i4>17</i4></value>
</member>
<member>
<name>faultString</name>
<value>
<string>no_link_found</string>
</value>
</member>
</struct>
</value>
</fault>
</methodResponse>
You can start using this right now to quickly handle Pingbacks as Webmentions on your own domain. This is a way to bootstrap the Webmention protocol until more services adopt it.
First, check your Ruby version. 2.0.0 does not work; details below. Try 1.9.3 or anything >=2.1.3 instead, they should work. Here are minimal instructions for Mac OS X, using Homebrew, ruby-install, and chruby:
brew install ruby-install chruby libxml2 libxslt
ruby-install ruby 2.1.6
source /usr/local/opt/chruby/share/chruby/chruby.sh
chruby 2.1.6
gem install bundler
Now, run these commands to set up your environment and start the server locally:
bundle install
cp config.yml.template config.yml
mysql -u root -e 'CREATE USER webmention@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "webmention"; CREATE DATABASE webmention; GRANT ALL ON webmention.* TO webmention@localhost; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;'
export RACK_ENV=development
bundle exec rake db:bootstrap
./start.sh
Now open http://localhost:9019/ and check that you see the front page. You can also run bundle exec rake test:sample1
to send a test pingback.
If bundle install
dies like this while compiling libxml-ruby:
...
ruby_xml_node.c:624:56: error: incomplete definition of type 'struct _xmlBuf'
result = rxml_new_cstr((const char*) output->buffer->content, xencoding);
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
...
An error occurred while installing libxml-ruby (2.3.3), and Bundler cannot continue.
Make sure that `gem install libxml-ruby -v '2.3.3'` succeeds before bundling.
You're in...um...a weird state. You probably have an old version of the repo checked out with a Gemfile.lock
that asks for libxml-ruby 2.3.3, which is incompatible with your system's libxml2 2.9.x. HEAD fixes this by asking for libxml-ruby 2.6.0. git pull
and then rerun bundle install
.
If bundle install
dies with this message in the middle of its error output:
/.../lib/ruby/2.0.0/tmpdir.rb:92:in `mktmpdir': parent directory is world writable but not sticky (ArgumentError)
...you can fix this with either chmod +t $TMPDIR
or (better) chmod 700 $TMPDIR
. Evidently this problem is common on Mac OS X.
When you open the front page, if you see an error that includes Library not loaded: libmysqlclient.18.dylib, your MySQL shared libraries may not be installed at a standard location, e.g. if you installed MySQL via Homebrew. Try DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib ./start.sh
(or wherever your MySQL libraries are located).
If rake db:bootstrap
raises an TypeError: no implicit conversion from nil to integer exception in quoting.rb
, you've hit this Ruby 2.0.0 bug/incompatibility. Use a different Ruby version.
If rake db:bootstrap
hangs while attempting to create the links
table , Ruby 2.0.0 strikes again! Use a different version. (You won't see progress details per table by default; it'll just hang.)
If bundle exec rake ...
complains Could not find rake-10.4.0 in any of the sources, and you run bundle install
and bundle check
and they're both happy, and vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.0/
exists...Ruby 2.0.0 strikes again. (Maybe?) Use a different version.
This server collects stats on its own, caches in Redis, and provides a Munin plugin to retrieve the stats.
Counts that are tracked, one graph for webmention, another for pingback
Q: Is there a way to replay webhooks from webmention.io?
A: In short no, however you should be able to get the same data from the API, and make sure you use the .jf2 URLs instead of .json since that's the format it uses for the webhook.
Copyright 2018-2024 by Aaron Parecki.
Available under the BSD License. See LICENSE.txt