finger-protocol

Finger (RFC 1288, port 79) and its successor WebFinger (RFC 7033), in Rust.

Both answer the same question, thirty years apart: who is this person? Finger answers with whatever text the host felt like printing. WebFinger answers with a JSON Resource Descriptor, which is why it, and not finger, is what resolves @alice@example.social on the fediverse.

This is not the reference implementation of either, and it does not speak for their communities.

Two protocols, two features

Both are on by default. Take default-features = false with just one when the other is dead weight.

WebFinger without an HTTP client

WebFinger rides on HTTPS, and this crate deliberately contains no HTTP stack. It implements the two spec-shaped halves and leaves the GET to you, since you already have an HTTP client and opinions about timeouts, redirects, and TLS:

use finger_protocol::webfinger::{acct, request_url, parse, MEDIA_TYPE};

let url = request_url("example.social", &acct("alice", "example.social"), &["self"]);
// GET `url` with `Accept: MEDIA_TYPE`, then:
# let body = r#"{"links":[{"rel":"self","href":"https://example.social/users/alice"}]}"#;
let jrd = parse(body).unwrap();
let profile = jrd.link("self").and_then(|l| l.href.as_deref());

Fingering a host

# async fn run() -> Result<(), finger_protocol::ClientError> {
let reply = finger_protocol::fetch("finger://example.org/alice").await?;
println!("{}", reply.text());
# Ok(())
# }

Both finger://host/user and finger://user@host name a user; a bare finger://host/ asks for the listing. RFC 1288's /W switch is available via Query::verbose.

License

MIT.