README

This node.js program is an intermediary which can retrieve a list of microblogging
messages from an ALPS compliant messaging service, and show them in a single list.

It more or less mimics the "twitter lists" function, but in the decentralized
twitterverse of the web, where nobody is in control.  Anyone can set up such a
list, and it'll be available to anyone who has access to the URI.

This is an intermediary which requires a whole lot of node.js stuff to be installed. :-)

It was developed using
- node 0.4.4
- jsdom 0.2.0
- journey 0.4.0-pre-2
- node-static 0.5.3
- cradle 0.5.5
- jquery 1.5.1

And a plain install of couchdb, with an empty database:

echo '' | GET -m PUT http://localhost:5984/proxy/

Populate a configuration for a "list".  Each URI should be the host name
and path of an ALPS compliant (X)HTML page which contains a message list.

echo '
  { "title" : "Mogsie and KevBurnsJr microblog combo"
   ,"urls":
    [
      {"host":"redacted",
       "port":8080
       "path":"/microblog/user-messages/mogsie"},
      {"host":"redacted-too.server.com",
       "path":"/myserver/mamund/messages.html"},
      {"host":"you-get-the-picture",
       "path":"/microblog/user-messages/lee"}
    ]
  }' | GET -m PUT http://localhost:5984/proxy/mylist

Now you can start the daemon itself:

node intermediary.js

and go to http://localhost:9876/proxy/mylist/  (note trailing slash) to see
the list

Notes: it sorts the messages by the date-time, which isn't machine readable,
and doesn't sort well anyway. YMMV.

It doesn't absolutize the URIs, so if your origin servers have relative
URIs things will break.

The markup was shamelessly stolen from the original implementation by mamund.

This whole thing is just an experiment, so please don't use this for anything
but if you do, you must send me a chocolate cake.

Future direction could include
- use the ALPS to handle signing up to the service
- caching the responses from the underlying origin servers and putting them
  (or at least the tweets) in the couchdb instance
- support for understanding profile pages, and navigate to the "list of
  messages" page
- support for tweeting by linking directly to a real server (no need to
  proxy the requests when the other server can do the work all alone.