Proposal: static file generator

[konklone]

This may be more suitable for a separate repo at create.webfinger.net or something, but I think it would be useful to let someone type in an email address, and the basic data they want to attach to it, and then generate them JSON they can drop in to their nginx/apache/S3/whatever setup.

It could also generate tiny snippets of nginx and Apache config, tiny S3 instructions, etc. It's also emphasize that this will only work over HTTPS.

One major question about a static file approach:

• Is it acceptable to essentially "fake" the processing of the resource parameter? Is it okay for any request to https://domain.com/.well-known/webfinger to return the same JSON? It's obviously not technically in-spec, but is it okay in practice for individual domain owners to take this approach?

I'm volunteering to create this, but it'd be extra motivating if I knew the org owners here liked the idea, and would feature it at a webfinger.net subdomain.

[willnorris]

ignoring the resource parameter and always returning the same document isn't technically invalid, but seems like a bad practice we wouldn't want to encourage. It's not hard to setup rewrite rules that allow a static file per user: https://gist.github.com/aaronpk/5846789

In general, I like the idea though. I wonder if it would be best written as a javascript app, and hosted inline with some new documentation on the main webfinger.net site that talks about how to host webfinger documents.

[pfefferle]

Should't it be enough to start some repos with the required config files for f.e. apache, nginx, ... and link them on a setup page where we only explain the general process of "static" WebFinger configuration?

We could ask Paul if we could re-use some of his texts: http://www.packetizer.com/webfinger/server.html

[pfefferle]

Another good link http://www.packetizer.com/webfinger/hosted-webfinger.html