Activity Streams 2.0

1. Introduction

In the most basic sense, an "Activity" is a semantic description of a completed or ongoing action. It is the goal of this specification to provide a JSON-based syntax that is sufficient to express metadata about activities in a rich, human-friendly but machine-processable and extensible manner. This can include constructing natural-language descriptions or visual representations about the activity, associating actionable information with various types of objects, communicating or recording activity logs, or delegation of potential actions to other applications.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

1.1 Relationship to JSON Activity Streams 1.0

This section is non-normative.

The JSON Activity Streams 1.0 [AS1] specification was published in May of 2011 and provided a baseline extensible syntax for the expression of completed activities. This specification builds upon that initial foundation by incorporating lessons learned through extensive implementation, community feedback and related ongoing work from a variety of other communities.

While the syntax defined by this specification diverges from that defined by JSON Activity Streams 1.0, the fundamental model defined by that original specification remains intact. Specific processing rules are defined by this specification that allow existing Activity Streams 1.0 documents to be mapped to and processed as an Activity Streams 2.0 document.

This specification incorporates several existing extensions to the 1.0 syntax directly into the 2.0 model. These include portions of the Activity Streams 1.0 Base Schema, Audience Targeting, Responses, and Priority extensions.

1.2 Serialization Notes

This specification describes a JSON-based [RFC7159] serialization syntax for the Activity Vocabulary that follows the conventions defined by the [JSON-LD] specification. While serialization forms other than JSON-LD are possible, alternatives are not discussed by this document.

When serialized, absent properties are represented by either (a) setting the property value to null, or (b) by omitting the property declaration altogether at the option of the publisher; these representations are semantically equivalent. If a property has an array value, the absence of any items in that array MUST be represented by omitting the property entirely or by setting the value to null. The appropriate interpretation of an omitted or explicitly null value is that no value has been assigned as opposed to the view that the given value is empty or nil.

This specification uses IRIs [RFC3987]. Every URI [RFC3986] is also an IRI, so a URI may be used wherever an IRI is named. There are two special considerations: (1) when an IRI that is not also a URI is given for dereferencing, it MUST be mapped to a URI using the steps in Section 3.1 of [RFC3987] and (2) when an IRI is serving as an "id" value, it MUST NOT be so mapped.

Unless otherwise specified, all properties with date and time values MUST conform to the "date-time" production in [RFC3339], with an uppercase "T" character used to separate date and time, and an uppercase "Z" character in the absence of a numeric time zone offset. All such timestamps SHOULD be represented relative to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Activity Streams 2.0 documents MUST be serialized using the UTF-8 character encoding.

The serialized JSON form of an Activity Streams 2.0 document MUST be consistent with what would be produced by the standard JSON-LD 1.0 Processing Algorithms and API [JSON-LD-API] Compaction Algorithm using, at least, the normative JSON-LD @context definition provided here. Implementations MAY augment the provided @context with additional @context definitions but MUST NOT override or change the normative context. Implementations MAY also include in the serialized JSON document additional properties and values not defined in the JSON-LD @context with the understanding that any such properties will likely be unsupported and ignored by consuming implementations that use the standard JSON-LD algorithms. See the Extensibility section for more information on handling extensions within Activity Streams 2.0 documents.

2.1 Minimal Activity

Fig. 1 Expresses the statement

'urn:example:person:martin' posted
    'http://example.org/foo.jpg'

. No additional detail is given.

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Example 1

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Post",
  "actor": "urn:example:person:martin",
  "object": "http://example.org/foo.jpg"
}

2.2 Basic activity with some additional detail

Fig. 2 Expresses the statement "Martin Smith posted an article to the blog 'Martin's Blog' at 3:04 PM UTC on February 2, 2015." Some additional details about the article, actor and target blog are given using properties defined by the Activity Streams 2.0 Vocabulary.

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Example 6

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Post",
  "published": "2015-02-10T15:04:55Z",
  "actor": {
   "@type": "Person",
   "@id": "urn:example:person:martin",
   "displayName": "Martin Smith",
   "url": "http://example.org/martin",
   "image": {
     "@type": "Link",
     "href": "http://example.org/martin/image.jpg",
     "mediaType": "image/jpeg"
   }
  },
  "object" : {
   "@id": "urn:example:blog:abc123/xyz",
   "@type": "Article",
   "url": "http://example.org/blog/2011/02/entry",
   "displayName": "Why I love Activity Streams"
  },
  "target" : {
   "@id": "http://example.org/blog/",
   "@type": "urn:example:types:blog",
   "displayName": "Martin's Blog"
  }
}

2.3 An extended activity

Fig. 3 A more extensive, single-entry "Activity Stream" follows.

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Example 11

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Collection",
  "totalItems": 1,
  "items" : [
    {
      "@type": "Post",
      "published": "2011-02-10T15:04:55Z",
      "generator": "http://example.org/activities-app",
      "provider": "http://example.org/activity-stream",
      "displayNameMap": {
        "en": "Martin posted a new video to his album.",
        "ga": "Martin phost le fisean nua a albam."
      },
      "actor": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "@id": "urn:example:person:martin",
        "displayName": "Martin Smith",
        "url": "http://example.org/martin",
        "image": {
          "@type": "Link",
          "href": "http://example.org/martin/image",
          "mediaType": "image/jpeg",
          "width": 250,
          "height": 250
        }
      },
      "object" : {
        "@type": "Image",
        "@id": "http://example.org/album/my_fluffy_cat",
        "preview": {
          "@type": "Link",
          "href": "http://example.org/album/my_fluffy_cat_thumb.jpg",
          "mediaType": "image/jpeg"
        },
        "url": [
          {
            "@type": "Link",
            "href": "http://example.org/album/my_fluffy_cat.jpg",
            "mediaType": "image/jpeg"
          },
          {
            "@type": "Link",
            "href": "http://example.org/album/my_fluffy_cat.png",
            "mediaType": "image/png"
          }
        ]
      },
      "target": {
        "@type": "Album",
        "@id": "http://example.org/album/",
        "displayNameMap": {
          "en": "Martin's Photo Album",
          "ga": "Grianghraif Mairtin"
        },
        "image": {
          "@type": "Link",
          "href": "http://example.org/album/thumbnail.jpg",
          "mediaType": "image/jpeg"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

3. Model

The Activity Vocabulary defines the abstract model for Activity Streams 2.0. The vocabulary is segmented into a one set of six core class and an extended set of Activity and Object types common to most "Social" Web applications. The core classes include: Object, Link, Actor, Activity, Collection and OrderedCollection. Each of these classes is described and illustrated below. The extended Activity and Object types are defined normatively in the Activity Vocabulary specification.

3.1 Object

The Object class is the primary base class for the Activity Streams vocabulary.

Previous versions of the Activity Streams format used the objectType property to identify the action type. The objectType property MUST NOT be used within an Activity Streams 2.0 document to represent object type.

While all properties are optional, all Object instances SHOULD at least contain either displayName or displayNameMap.

Fig. 4 Following is an example Object that uses the JSON-ID @id and @type JSON-LD keywords to express the global identifier and object type:

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Example 16

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@id": "http://example.org/foo",
  "@type": "Note",
  "displayName": "This is a note",
  "attributedTo": {
    "@id": "urn:example:person:joe",
    "@type": "Person",
    "displayName": "Joe Smith"
  },
  "published": "2014-08-21T12:34:56Z"
}

Implementations MUST treat all object types in an Activity Streams document as subclasses of Object unless the object is a Link.

Fig. 5 For instance, in the following example, the value of actor is considered to be an instance of Object while the value of object is not:

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Example 21

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@id": "http://example.org/foo",
  "@type": "Share",
  "displayName": "A Test",
  "actor": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "http://example.org/~sally",
    "displayName": "Sally"
  },
  "object": {
    "@type": "Link",
    "href": "http://example.org/posts/1"
  }
}

The Activity Vocabulary defines a broad range of Object types that are common to many "Social" Web applications. This specification stops short of defining semantically specific properties for most of these objects. External vocabularies can be used to express additional detail not covered by the Activity Vocabulary.

Furthermore, while implementations are free to introduce new types of Objects beyond those defined by the Activity Vocabulary, interoperability issues can arise when applications rely too much on extension types that are not recognized by other implementations. Care should be taken to not unduly overlap with or duplicate the existing Object types. For instance, some vocabularies (e.g. The Good Relations Vocabulary) define their own classes for describing locations. An implementation that wishes, for example, to use a http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#Location as an Object SHOULD identify that Object as being both a Place and an http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#Location, as illustrated in the following:

Fig. 6 An Object that is both a Place and a gr:Location:

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Example 26

{
  "@context": [
    "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    {
      "gr": "http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#"
    }
  ],
  "@type": ["Place", "gr:Location"],
  "displayName": "Sally's Restaurant",
  "longitude": 12.34,
  "latitude": 56.78,
  "gr:category": "restaurants/french_restaurants"
}

Certain properties defined by some External Vocabularies can overlap or duplicate those defined by the Activity Vocabulary. Where such overlap exists, for the sake of consistent interoperability, implementers MUST use the properties defined by the Activity Vocabulary.

3.2 Natural Language Values

Several properties defined by the Vocabulary are defined as having natural language values. These are representations of human-readable character sequences using one or more languages. Within the JSON-LD serialization, they are expressed as either (1) a single JSON string or (2) a JSON object mapping [RFC5646] Language-Tags to localized, equivalent translations of the same string value. In [JSON-LD], such constructs are referred to as "Language Maps". In the serialized JSON-LD, these two forms are differentiated using a simple property naming convention, for instance: "displayName" identifies the JSON string form for the displayName property while "displayNameMap" represents the Language Map form.

Fig. 7 A single displayName String value without language information:

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Example 31

{
  "displayName": "This is the title"
}

Fig. 8 Multiple, language-specific values:

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Example 36

{
  "displayNameMap": {
    "en": "This is the title",
    "fr": "C'est le titre",
    "sp": "Este es el titulo"
  }
}

Every key in the Language Map form MUST be a valid [RFC5646] Language-Tag. The associated values MUST be Strings.

The Activity Vocabulary defines four specific natural language values: displayName, title, summary, and content. Accordingly, the Activity Streams JSON-LD @context definition respectively maps the terms "displayName", "title", "summary", and "content" for representing the JSON string forms and the terms "displayNameMap", "titleMap", "summaryMap", and "contentMap" for representing the Language Map forms.

The default language for document or an individual object can be established using the JSON-LD @language keyword within a @context definition. For instance:

Fig. 9 Establishing a default language context:

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Example 41

{
  "@context": [
    "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    {"@language": "en"}
  ],
  "displayName": "This is the title"
}

The JSON-LD format generally supports one additional way of associating language tag information with a literal string value using what JSON-LD calls a "value object", as illustrated below:

Fig. 10 Specifying language in a JSON-LD value object:

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Example 46

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "displayName": {
    "@value": "This is the title",
    "@language": "en"
  }
}

While Activity Streams 2.0 implementations MAY use JSON-LD value objects in this manner, doing so is strongly discouraged. Implementations SHOULD, instead, use the Language Map form. The one situation where use of the value object cannot be avoided is when a default language context has been established and a particular language-sensitive field needs to be explicitly excluded from that context, as in the following example:

Fig. 11 Excluding a natural language property from the language context:

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Example 51

{
  "@context": [
    "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    { "@language": "en" }
  ],
  "displayName": {
    "@value": "This is the title",
    "@language": null
  }
}

3.3 Link

A Link describes a qualified, indirect reference to another resource that is closely related to the conceptual model of Links as established in [RFC5988].

For example, all Objects can contain an image property whose value describes a graphical representation of the containing object. This property will typically be used to provide the URL to an image (e.g. JPEG, GIF or PNG) resource that can be displayed to the user. Any given object might have multiple such visual representations -- multiple screenshots, for instance, or the same image at different resolutions. In Activity Streams 2.0, there are essentially three ways of describing such references.

Fig. 12 To reference a single image without any additional metadata, a direct association can be expressed as a JSON string containing an absolute or relative IRI.

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Example 56

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Application",
  "@id": "http://example.org/application/123",
  "displayName": "My Application",
  "image": "http://example.org/application/123.png"
}

Fig. 13 Alternatively, if additional metadata is required (such as the MIME content type of the referenced resource) a Link can be used:

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Example 61

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Application",
  "@id": "http://example.org/application/123",
  "displayName": "My Application",
  "image": {
    "@type": "Link",
    "href": "http://example.org/application/123.png",
    "mediaType": "image/png"
  }
}

Formally, the former example establishes an unqualified direct relationship with the image resource while the latter creates a qualified, indirect relationship that allows additional properties about the relationship to be specified. Such properties (e.g. mediaType, hreflang, rel, etc) describe the Link itself as opposed to describing the referenced resource. For many practical applications, this distinction will likely be fairly insignificant but it is still worth keeping in mind.

Fig. 14 If more than one value is to be expressed, A JSON Array with a mix of strings and Links can be used:

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Example 66

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Application",
  "@id": "http://example.org/application/123",
  "displayName": "My Application",
  "image": [
    "http://example.org/application/abc.gif",
    {
      "@type": "Link",
      "href": "http://example.org/application/123.png",
      "mediaType": "image/png"
    }
  ]
}

Individual items contained in such an array are independent of the others and no significance is given to the ordering.

RFC 5988 defines that all Links have a "link relation" that describes the contextual purpose of the link. Within a Link, the rel property provides the link relation value. If no rel property is specified, the link relation is considered to be unspecified.

In the following example, two separate references are provided. The link relation of the first is unspecified, while the link relation of the second is "canonical".

Fig. 15

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Example 71

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Application",
  "@id": "http://example.org/application/123",
  "displayName": "My Application",
  "image": [
    "http://example.org/application/abc.gif",
    {
      "@type": "Link",
      "href": "http://example.org/application/123.png",
      "mediaType": "image/png",
      "rel": "canonical"
    }
  ]
}

It ought to be noted that the [HTML5] specification provides it's own alternative definition of a "link relation" that differs slightly from the [RFC5988] definition. In the HTML5 definition, any string that does not contain the "space" U+0020, "tab" (U+0009), "LF" (U+000A), "FF" (U+000C), "CR" (U+000D) or "," (U+002C) characters can be used as a valid link relation. To promote interoperability, Activity Streams 2.0 implementations MUST only use link relations that are valid in terms of both the [RFC5988] and [HTML5] definitions.

Note that the Link and Object classes are disjoint from one another. That is, any given Object cannot also be a Link.

3.4 Actor

This specification intentionally defines Actors in only the most generalized way, stopping short of defining semantically specific properties for each. All Actor objects are specializations of Object and inherit all of the core properties common to all Object's. External vocabularies (VCard for instance) can be used to express additional detail not covered by the Activity Vocabulary.

Fig. 16 An Activity with a Person actor:

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Example 76

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Share",
  "actor": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "acct:sally@example.org",
    "displayName": "Sally Smith"
  },
  "object": {
    "@type": "Note",
    "content": "This is a simple note"
  }
}

Fig. 17 An Activity with a Person actor extended with VCard properties:

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Example 81

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Share",
  "actor": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "acct:sally@example.org",
    "displayName": "Sally Smith",
    "vcard:given-name": "Sally",
    "vcard:family-name": "Smith"
  },
  "object": {
    "@type": "Note",
    "content": "This is a simple note"
  }
}

While implementations are free to introduce new types of Actors beyond those defined by the Activity Vocabulary, interoperability issues can arise when applications rely too much on extension types that are not recognized by other implementations. Care should be taken to not unduly overlap with or duplicate the existing Actor types. For instance, some vocabularies (e.g. VCard) define their own classes for describing people. An implementation that wishes, for example, to use a vcard:Individual as an Actor SHOULD identify that Actor as being both a Person and an vcard:Individual, as illustrated in the following:

Fig. 18 An Actor that is both a Person and a vcard:Individual:

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Example 86

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Share",
  "actor": {
    "@type": ["Person", "vcard:Individual"],
    "@id": "acct:sally@example.org",
    "displayName": "Sally Smith",
    "vcard:given-name": "Sally",
    "vcard:family-name": "Smith"
  },
  "object": {
    "@type": "Note",
    "content": "This is a simple note"
  }
}

3.5 Activity

Activity objects are specializations of the base Object type that provide information about pending, ongoing or completed actions.

The JSON-ID @type keyword is used to identify the type of action the Activity Statement represents. Previous versions of the Activity Streams format used the verb property to identify the action type. The verb MUST NOT be used within an Activity Streams 2.0 Activity to represent the action type.

Fig. 19 The following example illustrates a simple Activity:

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Example 91

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Like",
  "@id": "urn:example:activity:1",
  "actor": "http://example.org/profiles/joe",
  "object": "http://example.com/notes/1",
  "published": "2014-09-30T12:34:56Z"
}

The Activity Vocabulary defines a broad range of Activity types that are common to many "Social" Web applications. This specification stops short of defining semantically specific properties for most of these activities. External vocabularies can be used to express additional detail not covered by the Activity Vocabulary.

Furthermore, while implementations are free to introduce new types of Activites beyond those defined by the Activity Vocabulary, interoperability issues can arise when applications rely too much on extension types that are not recognized by other implementations. Care should be taken to not unduly overlap with or duplicate the existing Activity types. For instance, some vocabularies (e.g. Schema.org) define their own classes for describing actions. An implementation that wishes, for example, to use http://schema.org/LikeAction as an Activity SHOULD identify that Object as being both a Like and an http://schema.org/LikeAction, as illustrated in the following:

Fig. 20 An Activity that is both a Like and a http://schema.org/LikeAction:

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Example 96

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": ["Like", "http://schema.org/LikeAction"],
  "@id": "urn:example:activity:1",
  "actor": "http://example.org/profiles/joe",
  "object": "http://example.com/notes/1",
  "published": "2014-09-30T12:34:56Z"
}

3.5.1 Audience Targeting

Every Activity has both a Primary and Secondary audience. The Primary audience consists of those entities either directly involved in the performance of the activity or who "own" the objects involved. The Secondary audience consists of the collection of entities sharing an interest in the activity but who are not directly involved (e.g. "followers").

For instance, suppose a social network of three individuals: Bob, Joe and Jane. Bob and Joe are each friends with Jane but not friends with one another. Bob has chosen to "follow" activities for which Jane is directly involved. Jane shares a file with Joe.

In this example, Jane and Joe are each directly involved in the file sharing activity and together make up the Primary Audience for that event. Bob, having an interest in activities involving Jane, is the Secondary Audience. Knowing this, a system that produces or consumes the activity can intelligently notify each person of the event.

While there are means, based on the action type, actor, object and target of the activity, to infer the primary audience for many types of activities, those do not work in every case and do not provide a means of identifying the secondary audience. The to, cc, bto and bcc properties MAY be used within an Activity to explicitly identify the Primary and Secondary audiences.

The prototypical use case for an Activity containing these properties is the publication and redistribution of Activities through an intermediary. That is, an event source generates the activity and publishes it to the intermediary which determines a subset of events to display to specific individual users or groups. Such a determination can be made, in part, by identifying the Primary and Secondary Audiences for each activity.

When the event source generates the activity and specifies values for the to and cc fields, the intermediary SHOULD redistribute that event with the values of those fields intact, allowing any processor to see who the activity has been targeted to. This is precisely the same model used by the to and cc fields in email systems.

There are situations, however, in which disclosing the identity of specific members of the audience may be inappropriate. For instance, a user may not wish to let other users know that they are interested in various topics, individuals or types of events. To support this option, an event source generating an activity MAY use the bto and bcc properties to list entities to whom the activity should be privately targeted. When an intermediary receives an activity containing these properties, it MUST remove those values prior to redistributing the activity. The intent is that systems MUST consider entities listed within the bto and bcc properties as part of the Primary and Secondary audience but MUST NOT disclose that fact to any other party.

Audience targeting information included within an Activity only describes the intent of the activity creator. With clear exception given to the appropriate handling of bto and bcc, this specification leaves it up to implementations to determine how the audience targeting information is used.

3.6 Collection

Collection objects are a specialization of the base Object that contain a listing of other Objects or Links. The Collection object is used primarily as the root of an Activity Streams Document, but can also be used as the value of object properties.

The model for collections within the Activity Vocabulary is designed largely around the abstract model of "logical feeds" and "pages" discussed in [RFC5005], Section 1.2. Specifically, collections have both a logical model and a physical serialization. While the logical model of a collection might contain a large number of member objects, any single serialized representation might include only a subset of those objects, with "paging" Links used to reference additional serialized representations that include other subsets. Such representations are known as "multi-page collections", with each serialized subset representing a single "page".

Collections can be ordered or unordered. In the JSON-LD serialization, the unordered members of a Collection are represented using the items property while the ordered members are represented using the orderedItems property. The normative JSON-LD @context definition maps both the items and orderedItems properties to the Activity Vocabulary items term. However, the orderedItems property is defined in the JSON-LD @context as @container = @list, indicating that the items are strictly ordered.

Note that when using orderedItems within a Collection object, the order imposed on the items applies only to the subset of items directly contained within the one Collection object. Implementations MAY use the OrderedCollection class to identify collections whose entire logical set of members are strictly ordered.

Fig. 21 The following is a simple unordered collection with paging:

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Example 101

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Collection",
  "totalItems": 10,
  "itemsPerPage": 1,
  "next": "http://example.org/foo?page=2",
  "self": "http://example.org/foo?page=1",
  "items": [
    {
      "@type": "Post",
      "actor": "urn:example:person:sally",
      "object": "http://example.org/foo"
    }
  ]
}

Fig. 22 The following is a simple ordered collection with paging:

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Example 106

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "OrderedCollection",
  "totalItems": 10,
  "itemsPerPage": 1,
  "next": "http://example.org/foo?page=2",
  "self": "http://example.org/foo?page=1",
  "startIndex": 0,
  "orderedItems": [
    {
      "@type": "Post",
      "actor": "urn:example:person:sally",
      "object": "http://example.org/foo"
    }
  ]
}

In ordered collections that use paging, the startIndex property is used to indicate the relative index position of the first item contained in the orderedItems list in the logical set of items. A startIndex of 0 indicates the first item in the collection.

Using paging with an OrderedCollection can be tricky because there is no guarantee that implementations will process the distinct pages in any predictable order. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that OrderedCollection instances that require paging always include the first, next, prev and last paging properties. Implementations that wish to reconstruct the appropriate complete ordering of member instances in the logical collection would navigate to the OrderedCollection instance identified by the first (or last) link, then recursively follow the next (or prev) link until all pages have been processed.

4. Activity Streams Document

An Activity Streams Document is a JSON-LD document whose root value is a Collection and whose MIME media type is "application/activity+json".

5. Deprecated Activity Streams 1.0 Syntax

The JSON syntax defined by this specification differs somewhat from that defined in the original JSON Activity Streams 1.0 [AS1] specification in ways that are not backwards compatible. Implementations can choose to continue supporting the JSON Activity Streams 1.0 syntax but SHOULD consider it to be deprecated. This means that while implementations MAY continue to consume the 1.0 syntax, they SHOULD NOT output the 1.0 syntax unless specifically interacting with older non-2.0 compliant implementations.

Specifically:

Implementations MUST use the "application/stream+json" MIME media type when producing a JSON serialization using the Activity Streams 1.0 syntax, and "application/activity+json" when producing a serialization conforming to the 2.0 syntax.
Implementations that process serializations identified using either the "application/stream+json" or the more generic "application/json" MIME media type MUST follow the syntax and processing rules set by [AS1]. The 2.0 syntax and processing rules apply only when handling serializations using the "application/activity+json" media type.
When processing Activity Streams 1.0 documents using a JSON-LD processing model, implementations MUST use the special AS 1.0 to AS 2.0 expansion @context definition provided here to produce the JSON-LD expanded representation. Refer to the JSON-LD Processing Algorithms and API for details.
When processing Activity Streams 1.0 documents and converting those to 2.0, implementations MUST treat id as an alias for the JSON-LD @id key word; and the objectType and verb properties as aliases for the JSON-LD @type keyword.
This document redefines the displayName, title, content and summary properties as natural language values which means their values can be expressed as either a String or a JSON-LD Language Map. In the 1.0 syntax, these are expressed solely as String values. Because the 1.0 values are a valid subset allowed by this specification, implementations are not required to take any specific action to continue supporting those values.
This document redefines a large number of common properties defined originally as Objects in 1.0 as either Objects or Links. The JSON-LD serialization allows such property values to be expressed as either an IRI String, an JSON object, or an Array of IRI Strings and JSON objects. Because the 1.0 values are a valid subset allowed by this specification, existing implementations are not required to take any specific action to continue supporting those values.
This specification deprecates the upstreamDuplicates and downstreamDuplicates properties defined by Activity Streams 1.0 and does not provide a replacement. This is due largely to lack of any reasonable implementation evidence. While the upstreamDuplicates and downstreamDuplicates properties MAY continue to be used, implementations SHOULD avoid them.

By following these requirements, all JSON Activity Streams 1.0 serializations can be processed successfully by 2.0 implementations.

6. Extensibility

In Activity Streams 2.0, an "extension" is any property not defined by the Activity Vocabulary. Consuming implementations that encounter unfamiliar extensions MUST NOT stop processing or signal an error and MUST continue processing the items as if those properties were not present. Support for specific extensions can vary across implementations and no normative processing model for extensions is provided.

While consuming implementations are not required to use the standard JSON-LD Processing Algorithms [JSON-LD-API], it is important to note that the algorithms, as currently defined, will silently ignore any property that is not defined in a JSON-LD @context. Implementations that publish Activity Streams 2.0 documents that contain extension properties SHOULD provide a @context definition of those extensions.

It is also important to note that there are valid JSON constructs which cannot be used within a JSON-LD document. For instance, JSON-LD forbids "arrays of arrays" as used, for example, by the popular GeoJSON specification. While implementations are free to use such constructs as extensions within an Activity Streams 2.0 document, consumers that use the standard JSON-LD Processing Algorithms will be required to either ignore such extensions or map those to alternative compatible constructs prior to applying the JSON-LD algorithms. Simple GeoJSON Points, for instance, can be mapped to Place objects, while more complex geometries can be converted to GeoSparql "Well-Known Text" representations as illustrated in the non-normative examples below:

Fig. 23 GeoJSON Point Coordinates:

Example 111

{
  "type": "Point",
  "coordinates": [36.74, -119.77]
}

Fig. 24 The Equivalent Place alternative:

JSON-LD
Microdata
RDFa
Microformats
Turtle

Example 112

{ 
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Place",
  "latitude": 36.74,
  "longitude": -119.77
}

Fig. 25 GeoJSON Polygon Coordinates:

Example 117

{
  "type": "Polygon",
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [100.0, 0.0], 
      [101.0, 0.0], 
      [101.0, 1.0], 
      [100.0, 1.0], 
      [100.0, 0.0]
    ]
  ]
}

Fig. 26 The Equivalent GeoSparl Well-Known-Text alternative:

JSON-LD
Microdata
RDFa
Microformats
Turtle

Example 118

{ 
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "geos:Geometry",
  "geos:asWKT": "Polygon((100.0, 0.0, 101.0, 0.0, 101.0, 1.0, 100.0, 1.0, 100.0, 0.0))"
}

6.1 Handling of JSON-ID Compact IRIs

In JSON-LD, a "Compact IRI" is a type of shorthand notation that allows absolute IRI values to be split into an absolute base IRI and a relative token. For instance, in the following example:

Fig. 27

Example 123

{
  "@context": {
    "foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
  },
  "foaf:givenName": "Sam"
}

The property name foaf:givenName is a Compact IRI that expands to "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName" when processed by a JSON-LD implementation.

While there are differences of opinion on how extensively Compact IRIs ought to be used within JSON-LD document instances, JSON-LD implementations are required to support them.

In order to simplify implementation and encourage interoperable reuse, the following predefined prefixes are defined in the normative Activity Streams 2.0 JSON-LD @context. Implementations MUST NOT redefine any of the provided prefix mappings.

Prefix	Expanded	Name
`as:`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#`	Activity Streams Vocabulary
`dc:`	`http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/`	Dublin Core
`dct:`	`http://purl.org/dc/terms/`	Dublin Core Terms
`dctypes:`	`http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/`	Dublin Core Types
`foaf:`	`http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/`	Friend of a Friend
`vcard:`	`http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#`	VCard
`org:`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/org#`	W3C Org Ontology
`prov:`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#`	W3C Provenance Ontology
`geo:`	`http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#`	W3C Basic Geo Ontology
`geos:`	`http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#`	Geo-Sparql
`ical:`	`http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#`	iCalendar Ontology
`oa:`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#`	Web Annotation Data Model

For instance, the property name foaf:givenName would expand to "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName", while the property prov:actingOnBehalfOf would expand to "http://w3.org/ns/prov#actingOnBehalfOf".

7. Mentions, Tags and Other Common Social Microsyntaxes

Many social software systems use special text-based microsyntaxes that allow users to define special addressing for notifications, linking, or categorization within objects. For example, including text such as "@username" within an object's content will often route the object to a special "mentions" or "inbox" stream for a particular user. Likewise, including text such as "#topic" within the object's content will often mark the object as being related to the topic "topic". Such mechanisms are commonly referred to as "mentions" and "hashtags", respectively.

While such microsyntaxes MAY be used within the values of the content, displayName, summary, and title properties on an Activity Streams Object, implementations SHOULD NOT be required to parse the values of those properties in order to determine the appropriate routing of notifications, categorization or linking between objects. Instead, publishers SHOULD make appropriate use of the Activity Streams Vocabulary terms provided specifically for these purposes.

For example, suppose that an author wishes to send a note of thanks to another user named "sally" with a hashtag of "#givingthanks". A typical way this message would appear within the content of a note is shown below:

Fig. 28 A simple note with a mention an a hashtag:

 "Thank you @sally for all your hard work! #givingthanks"

A typical social software implementation would typically render such a content such that "@sally" is replaced with a hyperlink to "sally"'s social profile page and "#givingthanks" is replaced with a hyperlink to a listing of other notes that have been "tagged" with the same topic. Most implementations would also send a special notification to sally letting her know that a note mentioning her has been posted.

The following illustrates an equivalent Activity Streams Note object:

Fig. 29 Mentions and Tags within an Activity Streams Note

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Note",
  "content": "Thank you @sally for all your hard work! #givingthanks",
  "to": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "http://example.org/people/sally",
    "alias": "@sally"
  },
  "tag": {
    "@id": "http://example.org/tags/givingthanks",
    "alias": "#givingthanks"
  }
}

The to property indicates that the user "@sally" is to be considered part of the primary audience of the note and should therefore receive notification. The tag property associates the Note with a reference to "http://example.org/tags/givingthanks". Note that the note's content still includes the "@sally" and "#givingthanks" microsyntaxes but that consuming implementations are not required to parse those in order to make the appropriate associations.

In the case a publisher wishes to indicate a mention without an associated notification, the publisher can use the Mention object type as a value of the tag property. The Mention object is a subclass of Link.

Fig. 30 Mentions and Tags within an Activity Streams Note

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@type": "Note",
  "content": "Thank you @sally for all your hard work! #givingthanks",
  "tag": [
    {
      "@id": "http://example.org/tags/givingthanks",
      "alias": "#givingthanks"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Mention",
      "href": "http://example.org/people/sally",
      "displayName": "@sally"
    }
  ]
}

8. Security Considerations

Publishers or Consumers implementing Activity Streams as a stream of public data may also want to consider the potential for unsolicited commercial or malicious content and should take preventative measures to recognize such content and either identify it or not include it in their implementations.

Publishers should take reasonable measures to ensure potentially malicious user input such as cross-site scripting attacks are not included in the Activity Streams data they publish.

Consumers that re-emit ingested content to end-users MUST take reasonable measures if emitting ingested content to make sure potentially malicious ingested input is not re-emitted.

Consumers that re-emit ingested content for crawling by search engines should take reasonable measures to limit any use of their site as a Search Engine Optimization loophole. This may include converting untrusted hyperlinks to text or including a rel="nofollow" attribute.

Consumers should be aware of the potential for spoofing attacks where the attacker publishes activities or objects with falsified property values with the intent of injecting malicious content, hiding or corrupting legitimate content, or misleading users.

Activity Streams are JSON Documents and are subject to the same security considerations described in [RFC7159].

Activity Streams implementations handle URIs. See Section 7 of [RFC3986].

Activity Streams implementations handle IRIs. See Section 8 of [RFC3987].

9. IANA Considerations

9.1 The `application/activity+json` Media Type

This specification registers the application/activity+json MIME Media Type specifically for identifying documents conforming to the Activity Streams 2.0 format.

Type name:	application
Subtype name:	activity+json
Required parameters:	None
Optional parameters:	None
Encoding considerations:	Resources that use the "`application/activity+json`" Media Type are required to conform to all of the requirements for the "`application/json`" Media Type and are therefore subject to the same encoding considerations specified in Section 11 of [RFC7159].
Security considerations:	As defined in this specification.
Contact:	James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com>

9.2 The `application/stream+json` Media Type

This specification registers the application/stream+json MIME Media Type specifically for identifying documents conforming to the JSON Activity Streams 1.0 [AS1] format.

Type name:	application
Subtype name:	stream+json
Required parameters:	None
Optional parameters:	None
Encoding considerations:	Resources that use the "`application/stream+json`" Media Type are required to conform to all of the requirements for the "`application/json`" Media Type and are therefore subject to the same encoding considerations specified in Section 11 of [RFC7159].
Security considerations:	As defined in [AS1]
Contact:	James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com>

B. Summary of Changes

2015-01-16

Include Extended Vocabulary
- Add Actor, OrderedCollection
Include discussion about Mentions and Tags
Expanded Examples

2014-11-06

Refactor's Natural Language Context to address JSON-LD compatibility and serialization concerns. For instance, rather than "displayName" having a value that is *either* a string or a Language Map, this creates a separate "displayNameMap" for the Language Map case and keeps "displayName" as a String only. The JSON-LD processing algorithms handle this just fine and non-JSON-LD implementations end up with a more predictable, consistent target.
Remove the "language" property
Refactor as:Link, add as:href to indicate the target of the Link, move away from overloading @id. This ought to resolve the modeling issues that have been discussed.
Deprecate the "verb" property in AS 2.0, use @type instead to represent the Activity Type. Provide clear guidelines for handling the "verb" property when moving from AS 1.0 to AS 2.0.
Require JSON-LD compacted form using a normative JSON-LD @context definition. Forbid implementations from altering the normative JSON-LD @context. This will ensure that the serialized JSON will remain consistent for the key properties, making it easier for implementations that choose not to use the JSON-LD standard algorithms.
Strengthen the MUST IGNORE requirement for extensions. Make it clear that implementations SHOULD define extension properties using an @context and spell out the consequences if they do not. Make it clear that there are some valid JSON constructs (arrays of arrays) that are not supported in JSON-LD and show an example using the one significant case we are currently aware of (GeoJSON).
Provide a AS1-to-AS2 specific @context definition that is specifically for processing AS1 documents using AS2 semantics.
Remove the Verb and ObjectType abstract classes. Verb is no longer needed with the move to @type. Verbs just become subclasses of as:Activity. The ObjectType definition can be handled better using other constructs. Overall, this simplifies our vocabulary, which is good.
Add iCal to the JSON-LD initial context

2014-09-30

Rework serialization model to be based on JSON-LD.
Updated vocabulary model.
Remove notion of "Type Values".
Redefine "Link Values" as "Link".
Removed the "duplicates" property introduced in earlier AS2 drafts due to lack of any implementation evidence.
Vocabulary: rename "attachments" to "attachment" and "tags" to "tag", deprecate the old names.
Vocabulary: define "url", "image" and "icon" as having Link values. The clean up here ought to resolve the confusion over the relationship between @id, url, self, etc.
Vocabulary: The mediaType and rel properties are defined on Link and not Object.

D.1 Normative references

[AS1]: J. Snell; M. Atkins; W. Norris; C. Messina; M. Wilkinson; R. Dolin. JSON Activity Streams 1.0. unofficial. URL: http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/
[HTML5]: Ian Hickson; Robin Berjon; Steve Faulkner; Travis Leithead; Erika Doyle Navara; Edward O'Connor; Silvia Pfeiffer. HTML5. 28 October 2014. W3C Recommendation. URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/
[JSON-LD]: Manu Sporny; Gregg Kellogg; Markus Lanthaler. JSON-LD 1.0. 16 January 2014. W3C Recommendation. URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/
[JSON-LD-API]: Markus Lanthaler; Gregg Kellogg; Manu Sporny. JSON-LD 1.0 Processing Algorithms and API. 16 January 2014. W3C Recommendation. URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld-api/
[RFC2119]: S. Bradner. Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels. March 1997. Best Current Practice. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119
[RFC3339]: G. Klyne; C. Newman. Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps. July 2002. Proposed Standard. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339
[RFC3986]: T. Berners-Lee; R. Fielding; L. Masinter. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. January 2005. Internet Standard. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
[RFC3987]: M. Duerst; M. Suignard. Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs). January 2005. Proposed Standard. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3987
[RFC5988]: M. Nottingham. Web Linking. October 2010. Proposed Standard. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988
[RFC7159]: T. Bray, Ed.. The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format. March 2014. Proposed Standard. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159

D.2 Informative references

[RFC5005]: M. Nottingham. Feed Paging and Archiving. September 2007. Proposed Standard. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5005
[RFC5646]: A. Phillips, Ed.; M. Davis, Ed.. Tags for Identifying Languages. September 2009. Best Current Practice. URL: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646

Activity Streams 2.0

W3C Working Draft 29 January 2015

Abstract

Author's Note

Status of This Document

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 Relationship to JSON Activity Streams 1.0

1.2 Serialization Notes

2. Examples

2.1 Minimal Activity

2.2 Basic activity with some additional detail

2.3 An extended activity

3. Model

3.1 Object

3.2 Natural Language Values

3.3 Link

3.4 Actor

3.5 Activity

3.5.1 Audience Targeting

3.6 Collection

4. Activity Streams Document

5. Deprecated Activity Streams 1.0 Syntax

6. Extensibility

6.1 Handling of JSON-ID Compact IRIs

7. Mentions, Tags and Other Common Social Microsyntaxes

8. Security Considerations

9. IANA Considerations

9.1 The `application/activity+json` Media Type

9.2 The `application/stream+json` Media Type

A. Acknowledgements

B. Summary of Changes

2015-01-16

2014-11-06

2014-09-30

C. Table of Figures

D. References

D.1 Normative references

D.2 Informative references

Abstract

Author's Note

Status of This Document

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 Relationship to JSON Activity Streams 1.0

1.2 Serialization Notes

2. Examples

2.1 Minimal Activity

2.2 Basic activity with some additional detail

2.3 An extended activity

3. Model

3.1 Object

3.2 Natural Language Values

3.3 Link

3.4 Actor

3.5 Activity

3.5.1 Audience Targeting

3.6 Collection

4. Activity Streams Document

5. Deprecated Activity Streams 1.0 Syntax

6. Extensibility

6.1 Handling of JSON-ID Compact IRIs

7. Mentions, Tags and Other Common Social Microsyntaxes

8. Security Considerations

9. IANA Considerations

9.1 The application/activity+json Media Type

9.2 The application/stream+json Media Type

A. Acknowledgements

B. Summary of Changes

2015-01-16

2014-11-06

2014-09-30

C. Table of Figures

D. References

D.1 Normative references

D.2 Informative references

9.1 The `application/activity+json` Media Type

9.2 The `application/stream+json` Media Type