Publishing

Sending posts, edits, deletions and profile changes out to followers.

syncPost( id )

Call ap.syncPost( id ) for any post that might have changed, as often as you like. It compares the post with what was last sent and does whatever is needed:

Post is…	Sends
Public and never sent	`Create`
Public, sent, and its title, summary, content, url or tags changed	`Update`
Sent before, and now not public or gone (`getObject` returns `null`)	`Delete` — its id then answers `410 Gone`
Anything else	Nothing

Each post goes out as an Article, attributed to its author's Person account, addressed to the public and copied to that account's followers.

publishPost( id ) sends a post's first Create explicitly, if you'd rather not go through syncPost.

syncActor( type, name )

Does the same for an account's profile, sending Update{Person} when its name, bio, avatar, header or profile URL changed.

A scheduled sweep

A typical app runs a scheduled sweep rather than wiring syncPost into every save:

bxsapp.schedule( 2 * 60 * 1000, () => {
    for ( var id in recentPostIds() ) {
        ap.syncPost( id )
    }
    for ( var id in ap.federatedPostIds() ) {
        ap.syncPost( id )
    }
    ap.syncActor( "Person", "blog" )
}, { name : "activitypub-sync" } )

federatedPostIds() lists every post currently on the fediverse, so the sweep revisits posts that have since been unpublished or deleted and sends their Delete.

Choose a cutoff for "recent". Mastodon files a post under its published date, so an old post federated today lands deep in followers' timelines — and backfilling your whole archive sends every new follower a flood.

How this site does itThis blog federates only posts published after a configured cutoff date, and sweeps on a schedule the same way — syncPost for recent posts plus federatedPostIds(), then syncActor for the @blog account.

What can't be undone

[!WARNING] Permanent choices

Hostname and handles. Changing either orphans every follower. Account migration via Move isn't supported.

Post ownership. A post's id belongs forever to the account that first published it. Mastodon ignores a later Create of the same id from a different account.

Deletions. A deleted post's id stays deleted. Mastodon won't accept it again, even if you republish the post.

Settle all three before federating from production.