Whim

Whim is a command-line utility for sending, receiving, and working with webmentions.

Notable features include:

• A daemon to receive and store incoming webmentions
• A webmention verifier, suitable for scheduled operation
• A tool for sending webmentions, individually or en masse (given a source URL)
• Commands to query a local database of received webmentions
• A simple webserver to display webmention-powered comment sections as HTML, suitable for JavaScript-driven insertion into an otherwise static webpage

Project status

It's alpha

This software is very young, with present-but-incomplete documentation and inflexible configuration. It is absolutely full of not just bugs but questionable design decisions that I have yet to acknowledge and address.

I began this project in the spring of 2020, and hope to continue improving it over the course of the year. See the project's Issues tracker for ongoing status updates.

If you'd like to explore more mature alternatives than Whim for working with Webmention, please see the author's Webmention resource page.

Contact and support

I'd be happy to answer any questions about this project or via email. You may also wish to join the #whim channel on Libera Chat, where I am likely idling but listening as jmac.

Installing Whim

You need the following stuff already installed to run Whim:

• SQLite
• Perl (version 5.24.0 or higher)
• The `cpanm` command-line program. It is likely available as "cpanminus" in your favorite package manager. You can also install it through the instructions at https://cpanmin.us.

Installing Whim via CPAN

$ cpanm Whim   # Note the capital 'W'!

Installing Whim from source

Install dependencies:

$ cpanm --installdeps .

If you want to test Whim before installing it (this step is optional):

$ prove -l t/ xt/
⋮
Result: PASS

Finally, install Whim:

$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make install

Running whim

The whim executable accepts the following subcommands.

• listen: Run a daemon that listens for incoming webmentions and stores them in a local database.

  See also "Displaying webmentions", below.

• send: Send webmentions.

• query: Query a local database for stored, verified webmentions meeting given criteria, and display the results as a human-readable summary.

  (It should offer JSON output as well, but alas it does not right now.)

  This command also lets you view and modify a blocklist of unwelcome webmention sources. Blocked webmentions don't appear in query results.

• verify: Try to verify every stored webmention that requires verification.

For quick help on any command, run whim help [command].

For more complete documentation, run man whim.

Displaying webmentions

Besides listening for incoming webmentions, the listen command also sets up HTTP endpoints at /display_wms and /summarize_wms. They accept GET requests that contain one query-string argument, url. Whim will fetch and display, as HTML, all verified webmentions whose source matches the given URL.

For example:

http//example.com:8080/display_wms?url=https://some-source.example/foobar

Whim uses a set of default templates to make this work. You can provide your own templates in $HOME/.whim/templates. The fact that I have no further information for you about this is a known issue. (GitHub issue #34)

"Whim"?

Two possible explanations:

1. It stands for white matter, the connective tissue betweeen separate neurological structures in the human brain. Its function resembles Webmention's role in allowing independent websites to communicate, and thus helping their respective authors to collaborate.
2. Whim puts the hi! in webmentions.

Author and contributors

Whim's lead developer is Jason McIntosh.

Contributors include:

• Yanick Champoux
• Adam Herzog
• Brian Wisti

Copyright and licence

This software is Copyright (c) 2020 by Jason McIntosh.

This is free software, licensed under the MIT License.

This repository contains copies of artwork made available through a Creative Commons Attribution ("CC-BY") license:

• "bookmark" by Agni from the Noun Project
• "like" by Acharyas from the Noun Project
• "repost" by aditvest from the Noun Project