View source for ActivityPub/Primer/Streams

The <code>streams</code> property of ActivityPub actors is defined as ''A list of supplementary Collections which may be of interest.''

This property is not widely implemented. There is not a clear way to filter the list of Collections according to what a client application may need. For example, a client application that wants to show contact lists to the user would not have an easy way to find only contact lists in <code>streams</code>. A client application that wants to show photo albums to the user would not have an easy way to find only photo albums in <code>streams</code>.

== Servers ==

Servers should use [[Activity Streams/Primer/Extensions|extension]] properties of the actor to provide specific collections like albums, contact lists, or filtered inbox or outbox streams.

Publishers can also include those collections in the <code>streams</code> list, to allow users to review the streams even if their client software does not support the extension.

== Clients ==

Clients should use [[Activity Streams/Primer/Extensions|extension]] properties of the actor to query specific collections like albums, contact lists, or filtered inbox or outbox streams.

Clients can also show collections in the <code>streams</code> list to users, to let them manually browse the collections.

Clients may use <code>streams</code> to query specific collections by heuristics -- for example, the <code>name</code> property, or the <code>type</code> property of <code>items</code> in the collections. However, this will be inexact, and is less preferable than using well-defined extensions.