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+---
+title: "finding the account information of a Mastodon account manually via curl requests"
+date: 2025-01-12
+tags:
+  - ActivityPub
+---
+[Then Try This](https://thentrythis.org/), a non-profit research group, recently changed their mastodon handle from
+
+```text
+@thentrythis@mastodon.thentrythis.org
+```
+
+to
+
+```text
+@thentrythis@mastodon.thentrythis.org
+```
+
+to understand how this works (because [I like understanding the ActivityPub protocol](https://blog.alifeee.co.uk/notes/tagged/ActivityPub/)), I tried to find how my Mastodon client would find the new account.
+
+When you open the original account profile, it opens on `social.thentrythis.org`, so there must be some path from `thentrythis.org` to there.
+
+First, I tried accessing several URLs off the top of my head that I thought were used.
+
+```text
+https://thentrythis.org/.well-known/webfinger
+https://social.thentrythis.org/.well-known/webfinger
+```
+
+They all were blank.
+
+Then, I was [pointed in the right direction](https://post.lurk.org/@yaxu/113810961437047380), and now I could manually make the same requests that my Mastodon client would do using [Mastodon's documentation](https://github.com/felx/mastodon-documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Serving_a_different_domain.md).
+
+The process is:
+
+Given a username, i.e., `@thentrythis@thentrythis.org`, find the format of the "webfinger request" (which allows you to request data about a user), which should be on `/.well-known/host-meta`. The key here is that the original site (`thentrythis.org`) redirects to the "social site" (`social.thentrythis.org`).
+
+```bash
+$ curl -i "https://thentrythis.org/.well-known/host-meta" | head -n4
+HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
+Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 18:56:53 GMT
+Server: Apache/2.4.62 (Debian)
+Location: https://social.thentrythis.org/.well-known/host-meta
+
+$ curl "https://social.thentrythis.org/.well-known/host-meta"
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<XRD xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0">
+  <Link rel="lrdd" template="https://social.thentrythis.org/.well-known/webfinger?resource={uri}"/>
+</XRD>
+```
+
+Then, we can use the template returned to query a user by placing `acct:<user>@<server>` into the template, replacing `{uri}`, i.e.,
+
+```bash
+curl -s "https://social.thentrythis.org/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:thentrythis@thentrythis.org" | jq
+{
+  "subject": "acct:thentrythis@thentrythis.org",
+  "aliases": [
+    "https://social.thentrythis.org/@thentrythis",
+    "https://social.thentrythis.org/users/thentrythis"
+  ],
+  "links": [
+    {
+      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
+      "type": "text/html",
+      "href": "https://social.thentrythis.org/@thentrythis"
+    },
+    {
+      "rel": "self",
+      "type": "application/activity+json",
+      "href": "https://social.thentrythis.org/users/thentrythis"
+    },
+    {
+      "rel": "http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/subscribe",
+      "template": "https://social.thentrythis.org/authorize_interaction?uri={uri}"
+    },
+    {
+      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/avatar",
+      "type": "image/png",
+      "href": "https://social.thentrythis.org/system/accounts/avatars/113/755/294/674/928/838/original/640741180e302572.png"
+    }
+  ]
+}
+```
+
+neat :]
+
+It's always nice to know that I could use Mastodon by *reaaaallllyyy* slowly issuing my own curl requests (or, what this really means, build my own client).