more info

Author: boyter

README.md

@@ -22,10 +22,8 @@ The goal is to create a collction that can be used by someone in a clean room en
  - [Move Post](move-post.md) - User Migration
  - [Delete Post](delete-post.md) - Toot/Tweet/Post Deletion
  - [Follow Post](follow-post.md) - Follow Account
-
-
-Webfinger is described quite well at the following https://webfinger.net/ and should be considered essential reading as it is used across the fediverse.
-
+ - [Webfinger](webfinger.md) - Webfinger
+ - [User](user.md) - Getting user details
 
 PR's are encouraged!
 

user.md

@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+# User
+
+Fetching a users details usually follows a webfinger against the user to validate they exist.
+
+Given a valid webfinger such as the following
+
+https://mastinator.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:[email protected]
+
+We can then query their self location to determine their inbox,
+
+```json
+{
+    "subject": "acct:[email protected]",
+    "links": [
+        {
+            "rel": "self",
+            "type": "application/activity+json",
+            "href": "https://mastinator.com/u/someaccount"
+        }
+    ]
+}
+```
+
+The important part in the above is the `links.rel` where `self` indicates that the `href` for this object contains the location of this users details.
+
+We can then issue a get request to this endpoint to get the details for the user.
+
+```json
+curl --location --request GET 'https://mastinator.com/u/someaccount' \
+--header 'Accept: application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
+```
+
+For mastodon the accept headers of `application/activity+json`, `application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams` or `application/json` will work for the above call, but many instance types will reject the first two. It is safer to use one of the first two which are strictly speaking more correct anyway.
+
+Note that fetching the url without this header will usually result in a redirect to the HTML version of the users inbox, or return HTML directly.

webfinger.md

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Webfinger
+
+Webfinger is described quite well at the following https://webfinger.net/ and should be considered essential reading as it is used across the fediverse.
+