0
Sending a private message without cc causes a 500 error (community.nodebb.org)
submitted 5 days ago by rikudou@community.nodebb.org to c/activitypub@community.nodebb.org
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The logs from this are already cleared on my server, but when I sent a private message (standard Create/Note with a single recipient who also has a Mention in the tag property) from my custom software to my account here, I received a 500 error saying something like "cc is not iterable" (though I don't know the exact phrasing). When I included cc as an empty array, it started working. Not sure whether it was missing on Create or Note, maybe it was both.

top 8 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] freamon@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 days ago

@rikudou As far as I understand things, a 'private message' in ActivityPub is Create / ChatMessage, not Create / Note. I think NodeBB wouldn't be the only software to complain if 'cc' is missing from either part of Create / Note (although it's not expected in either part of Create / ChatMessage).

[-] rikudou@community.nodebb.org 1 points 1 hour ago

@freamon As others have said, ChatMessage is non-standard. The Create/Note is not particularly great for private messages, but whatever. Anyway, cc is not a required field of Note nor Create, so any software that would complain has a bug.

[-] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 days ago

@freamon Create(ChatMessage) is not part of ActivityPub. From my light research online it is something added by a Pleroma extension and possibly supported by Lemmy.

NodeBB will automatically slot received non-public notes as chat messages.

[-] freamon@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 days ago

@julian Oh, right. Thanks. But yeah, it's what Lemmy (and PieFed) uses, so I just assumed it was part of AP, and never looked into it any further.

I was thinking while typing this "I bet that means that chat messages from NodeBB to PieFed will fail", which I just tested, and sure enough they do (I'll make an Issue for it on PieFed's repo).

[-] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 days ago

Ah, that's unfortunate. When NodeBB sends a chat message out, it is just a regular Note with the recipients directly addressed, with no as:Public pseudo-user.

So as long as PieFed handles mentioned-only notes the activity should be processed...

[-] freamon@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 days ago

@julian It currently doesn't. If someone is Mentioned, the assumption is that it was part of post / comment in a community, and it fails because it can't find the community. I know that, for Lemmy, if you Mention someone in a comment, and they don't have a copy of the community (or they do and there's no local subscribers to it), then it will reject it. I don't know what it does if there's no community at all (I'll figure out a way to test it, on a server I can control).

[-] freamon@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 days ago

@freamon Update: no, Lemmy doesn't understand them either. It rejects Create / Note without a community with the usual "did not match any variant of untagged enum AnnouncableActivities"

[-] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 5 days ago

@rikudou thanks, can you file an issue on the GitHub repo?

https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/new

this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
0 points (NaN% liked)

ActivityPub

0 readers
2 users here now

Focused discussion related to ActivityPub integration in NodeBB

founded 1 month ago