<img src="https://raw.github.com/snarfed/granary/main/static/granary_logo_512.png" alt="Granary" width="128" /> granary

The social web translator. Fetches and converts data between social networks, HTML with microformats2, mf2json, ActivityStreams/ActivityPub, Atom, JSON Feed, and more.

About
Using
- Using the REST API
- Using the library
Troubleshooting/FAQ
Future work
Development
Release instructions
Related work
Changelog

About

Granary is a library and REST API that fetches and converts between a wide variety of social data sources and formats:

Facebook, Flickr, GitHub, Instagram, Mastodon, and Twitter native APIs
Instagram and Facebook scraped HTML
ActivityStreams 1.0 and 2.0 JSON, including ActivityPub
HTML with microformats2 (e.g. h-entry, h-feed, h-card, h-event), mf2json
Atom, RSS 2.0, JSON Feed
Plain XML
Bluesky/AT Protocol
Nostr, with many NIPs

Free yourself from silo API chaff and expose the sweet social data foodstuff inside in standard formats and protocols!

Here's how to get started:

Granary is available on PyPi. Install with pip install granary.
Getting started docs.
Reference docs.
REST API and demo app at granary.io.
Source code on GitHub.

License: This project is placed in the public domain. You may also use it under the CC0 License.

Using

The library and REST API are both based on the OpenSocial Activity Streams service. Let's start with an example. This code using the library:

from granary import twitter
...
tw = twitter.Twitter(ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET)
tw.get_activities(group_id='@friends')

is equivalent to this HTTP GET request:

https://granary.io/twitter/@me/@friends/@app/
  ?access_token_key=ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY&access_token_secret=ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET

They return the authenticated user's Twitter stream, ie tweets from the people they follow. Here's the JSON output:

{
  "itemsPerPage": 10,
  "startIndex": 0,
  "totalResults": 12,
  "items": [{
      "verb": "post",
      "id": "tag:twitter.com,2013:374272979578150912",
      "url": "http://twitter.com/evanpro/status/374272979578150912",
      "content": "Getting stuff for barbecue tomorrow. No ribs left! Got some nice tenderloin though. (@ Metro Plus Famille Lemay) http://t.co/b2PLgiLJwP",
      "actor": {
      "username": "evanpro",
        "displayName": "Evan Prodromou",
        "description": "Prospector.",
        "url": "http://twitter.com/evanpro",
      },
      "object": {
        "tags": [{
            "url": "http://4sq.com/1cw5vf6",
            "startIndex": 113,
            "length": 22,
            "objectType": "article"
          }, "..."],
      },
    }, "..."]
  "..."
}

The request parameters are the same for both, all optional: USER_ID is a source-specific id or @me for the authenticated user. GROUP_ID may be @all, @friends (currently identical to @all), @self, @search, or @blocks; APP_ID is currently ignored; best practice is to use @app as a placeholder.

Paging is supported via the startIndex and count parameters. They're self explanatory, and described in detail in the OpenSearch spec and OpenSocial spec.

When using the GROUP_ID @search (for platforms that support it — currently Twitter and Instagram), provide a search string via the q parameter. The API is loosely based on the OpenSearch spec, the OpenSocial Core Container spec, and the OpenSocial Core Gadget spec.

Output data is JSON Activity Streams 1.0 objects wrapped in the OpenSocial envelope, which puts the activities in the top-level items field as a list and adds the itemsPerPage, totalCount, etc. fields.

Most Facebook requests and all Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr requests will need OAuth access tokens. If you're using Python on Google App Engine, oauth-dropins is an easy way to add OAuth client flows for these sites. Otherwise, here are the sites' authentication docs: Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter.

If you get an access token and pass it along, it will be used to sign and authorize the underlying requests to the sources providers. See the demos on the REST API endpoints above for examples.

Using the REST API

The endpoints above all serve the OpenSocial Activity Streams REST API. Request paths are of the form:

/USER_ID/GROUP_ID/APP_ID/ACTIVITY_ID?startIndex=...&count=...&format=FORMAT&access_token=...

All query parameters are optional. FORMAT may be as1 (the default), as2, atom, html, jsonfeed, mf2-json, rss, or xml (the default). atom supports a boolean reader query parameter for toggling rendering appropriate to feed readers, e.g. location is rendered in content when reader=true (the default). The rest of the path elements and query params are described above.

Errors are returned with the appropriate HTTP response code, e.g. 403 for Unauthorized, with details in the response body.

By default, responses are cached and reused for 10m without re-fetching the source data. (Instagram responses are cached for 60m.) You can prevent this by adding the cache=false query parameter to your request.

Include the shares=false query parameter to omit shares, eg Twitter retweets, from the results.

To use the REST API in an existing ActivityStreams/ActivityPub client, you'll need to hard-code exceptions for the domains you want to use e.g. facebook.com, and redirect HTTP requests to the corresponding endpoint above.

Facebook and Instagram are disabled in the REST API entirely, sadly.

Using the library

See the example above for a quick start guide.

Clone or download this repo into a directory named granary. Each source works the same way. Import the module for the source you want to use, then instantiate its class by passing the HTTP handler object. The handler should have a request attribute for the current HTTP request.

The useful methods are get_activities() and get_actor(), which returns the current authenticated user (if any). See the full reference docs for details. All return values are Python dicts of decoded ActivityStreams 1 JSON.

The microformats2.*_to_html() functions are also useful for rendering ActivityStreams 1 objects as nicely formatted HTML.

Troubleshooting/FAQ

Check out the oauth-dropins Troubleshooting/FAQ section. It's pretty comprehensive and applies to this project too.

Future work

We'd love to add more sites! Off the top of my head, YouTube, Tumblr, WordPress.com, Sina Weibo, Qzone, and RenRen would be good candidates. If you're looking to get started, implementing a new site is a good place to start. It's pretty self contained and the existing sites are good examples to follow, but it's a decent amount of work, so you'll be familiar with the whole project by the end.

Development

Pull requests are welcome! Feel free to ping me in #indieweb-dev with any questions.

First, fork and clone this repo. Then, install the Google Cloud SDK and run gcloud components install cloud-firestore-emulator to install the Firestore emulator. Once you have them, set up your environment by running these commands in the repo root directory:

Granary

Install / Use

README