fedilogue/README.md

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# Fedilogue

Fedilogue is a fediverse cataloging and search platform. The intention is to create a centralized search
system for use by fediverse users and APIs.

## How does Fedilogue gather data?

Fedilogue employs multiple methods to gather post and account data.
* Through publicly accessible timelines
* Through publicly accessible relays
* Through privately accessible timelines, requiring an account on a given instance (untested)
* Through followed users using a mass following agent (planned)

## Supported Instances

Fedilogue can retrieve Notes (posts) from any instance that supports the ActivityPub protocol. However, it can only pull from Mastodon and Pleroma.

## How to run

### Go version

This code was written on Go 1.16.

### Build Fedilogue

```
git clone https://gitlab.com/khanzf/fedilogue
cd fedilogue/fedilogue
go build
```

This will produce a fedilogue executable in the project directory.

### Prepopulate the Database

Create the `fedilogue` database and the user fedilogue. The exact process for this is outside of the scope of this document


```
CREATE USER fedilogue WITH PASSWORD 'yoursecurepassword';
CREATE DATABASE fedilogue OWNER fedilogue;
```

Set the environment variable 

```
export DATABASE_URL="postgres://fedilogue:yoursecurepassword@localhost/fedilogue"
```

Change accordingly if your username, hostname and database are different.

```
cd fedilogue/fedilogue
psql -U fedilogue -h localhost < tables.sql
```

### Generate private and public key

This is only necessary if you are receiving posts from a relay.

```
cd fedilogue
mkdir -p keys
openssl genrsa -out keys/private.pem 3072
openssl rsa -in keys/private.pem -pubout -out keys/public.pem
```

### Configuration

Fedilogue is configured by the `config.jsonc` file. Start by copying the `config.jsonc.sample` file to
`config.jsonc` and edit the file with your use-case values. The configuration file is written in jsonc and
has enclosed explanations that should be self-explanatory.

Over time, all configuration will be done through the database. 


## Starting Fedilogue

### Starting the retrieval daemon

```
cd fedilogue
./fedilogue
```

### Subscribe to a relay

Make sure that the `hostname` variable is set to a host that points to your fedilogue instance. Forward port
SSL/443 to port 8042.

```
./fedictl -follow https://relay.social.tigwali.fr/inbox
```

### Starting the RestAPI service

Start the RestAPI service to make the data accessible to external services, such as the web interface (which is currently not written).

```
cd restapi
go build .
./restapi
```

For documentation on how the API is located [here](restapi/RESTAPI.md).

## Contact

Ping me at [@fikran@thebag.social](https://thebag.social/@fikran)