question: resolving webfinger accounts

[steve-bate]

I have installed FediSky using the installed script (default answers to prompts). My nodeinfo endpoint works, but I haven't been able to resolve an account using WebFinger. My PDS host is pds.stevebate.net and my handle is stevebate.net. I am able to resolve stevebate.net using a resolveHandle call to my PDS.

The docs mention "username". Is that the ATProto account handle? I've tried many variations of acct: for webfinger and nothing has worked.

EDIT:
I created an account with the handle 'fediverse.pds.stevebate.net' and I was able to resolve 'acct:fediverse@pds.stevebate.net'. Are there some assumptions in the code about the structure of the handle which causes the 'stevebate.net' handle to not work?

[msonnb]

Hi, thanks for trying out FediSky!

Yes, that's a limitation right now, we basically assume that handles are subdomains of the hostname, so for acct:fediverse@pds.stevebate.net we look up the handle fediverse.pds.stevebate.net. Definitely need to make this clearer in the docs!

Tbh I don't have an obvious solution in mind for handles that use the apex domain (like stevebate.net), may I ask which variations of acct: you tried, or asked differently, what did you expect the webfinger account to be for your stevebate.net handle? From the spec it looks like we need to have at least one character for the localpart before the @ (which is what the docs mean by "username")

[steve-bate]

Hi, thanks for trying out FediSky!

Thanks for creating it!

Yes, that's a limitation right now, we basically assume that handles are subdomains of the hostname, so for acct:fediverse@pds.stevebate.net we look up the handle fediverse.pds.stevebate.net. Definitely need to make this clearer in the docs!

Tbh I don't have an obvious solution in mind for handles that use the apex domain (like stevebate.net), may I ask which variations of acct: you tried, or asked differently, what did you expect the webfinger account to be for your stevebate.net handle? From the spec it looks like we need to have at least one character for the localpart before the @ (which is what the docs mean by "username")

I changed the domain to stevebate.social (same for PDS and AP). Here's a working WebFinger URL.

https://stevebate.social/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:stevebate.social@stevebate.social

The PDS handle is stevbate.social. I got this work by hacking the webfinger resolution to not append the PDS hostname for this username.

Here's an interesting twist though. Mastodon will initially resolve acct:stevebate.social@stevebate.social. However, when the Mastodon code sees the period in the username, it will strip the period and everything after that and resolve again with the trimmed username (acct:stevebate@stevebate.social). The second webfinger resolution will normally fail. I have another hack in the FediSky code to expand the trimmed username back to the full handle to resolve the DID. That works, but I'm not sure what the best general solution would be. Maybe webfinger aliases defined in the AP config?

This is how it looks in Mastodon.

and in BlueSky (web app):