Support multiple URLs for `-t`/`--traverse` in cli command `fedify lookup`

[sij411]

Summary

Implements multiple URLs support for -t/--traverse option in fedify lookup.

Problem

fedify lookup --traverse only fetches single collection url.

Proposed Solution

In line 278,

 // FIXME: Implement -t, --traverse when multiple URLs are provided
  if (command.urls.length < 1) {
    printError(message`At least one URL or actor handle must be provided.`);
    process.exit(1);
  } else if (command.traverse && command.urls.length > 1) {
    printError(
      message`The -t/--traverse option cannot be used with multiple arguments.`,
    );
    process.exit(1);
  }

modify this block to not to throw error when traverse option and multiple urls are given.

In line 390-474,

  if (command.traverse) {
    const url = command.urls[0];
    let collection: APObject | null;

modify the block to fetch objects from each given urls.

Alternatives Considered

No response

Scope / Dependencies

packages/cli/src/lookup.ts

[Mrunal-Malkar]

Hi! I’m interested in contributing, could you pls assign it to me. I’m familiar with Node/MERN, but new to ActivityPub. Could you provide some guidance or starting points for this issue?

[dahlia]

Hi @Mrunal-Malkar! Welcome to the Fedify project. I'll help you get started with issue #408.

This issue involves adding support for multiple URLs when using the --traverse option in the fedify lookup command. Currently, the command can only traverse a single collection at a time, but we want to extend it to handle multiple collections in one command. Since Fedify is transitioning to Optique (a new type-safe CLI parser) as part of Fedify 2.0 (#374), you'll need to work on the next branch where the Optique-based implementation is being developed, not the main branch which still uses the Cliffy-based implementation. You can refer to #195 to understand how the --traverse feature was originally implemented—it fetches all items within a collection rather than just showing the collection object itself. The main challenge will be handling multiple collections efficiently (whether in parallel or sequence) and ensuring the output clearly separates items from different collections, similar to how multiple regular lookups are currently separated with ---- or a custom separator.

Before starting, please read our CONTRIBUTING.md file for development setup instructions, coding standards, and the contribution workflow. This will help you understand how to set up your development environment and submit your changes properly.

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Fedify! Don't hesitate to ask questions if you need any clarification—you can reach out here in the issue comments, join our Discord server's #fedify-dev-en channel, or connect with us in our Matrix chat room. We're here to help and looking forward to your contribution!

[Mrunal-Malkar]

Hi 👋,

I’ve been trying hard to get the installation of Mise done and set everything up for contributing to Fedify, but for the past 3 days I haven’t been able to do so on my Windows machine. The requirements seem to be much smoother on Linux/macOS, but since I’m a beginner on Windows I’ve been running into trouble setting it up.

I wanted to ask: would it be okay if I skip Mise and instead install and manage the dependencies manually (using npm install, Bun, etc.)? I understand that Mise helps manage runtimes and keep versions consistent, but if it’s acceptable for contributing, I’d prefer to move forward this way so I can start contributing sooner.

Thanks a lot!

[notJoon]

@Mrunal-Malkar The project does not depend on mise, so manually installing and managing dependencies won't be a major problem for contributing. I did it that way too initially.

[dahlia]

@Mrunal-Malkar No worries about mise! It's completely optional and you can definitely contribute without it. mise is just a convenience tool for managing multiple runtime versions, but it's not required for the project.

For Windows development, I'd highly recommend using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) as it provides a much smoother experience with our toolchain. Most of our contributors on Windows use WSL.

Here's what you actually need to get started:

1. Deno: This is our primary runtime. Install from https://deno.com/
2. Node.js: Only needed for docs. Install from https://nodejs.org/
3. pnpm: We use pnpm instead of npm. Install with npm install -g pnpm

Note that we don't use npm for package management; we use Deno for the main library and pnpm for docs.

Quick setup steps:

# Clone the repo and navigate to it
git checkout next  # Important: work on the next branch for this issue
deno task codegen  # Required first step for code generation
deno task test     # Run tests to make sure everything works

You can also test the CLI with:

deno task cli lookup @fedify@hollo.social

Don't hesitate to ask if you run into any other setup issues! We're here to help.

[Mrunal-Malkar]

Hi,

I ran into a problem I wasn’t intending to solve.
Running "deno task cli" fails due to a type error:

The argument of Uint8Array doesn’t match the expected ArrayBuffer.
It's in "packages/fedify/src/runtime/key.ts"

TypeScript is very strict about this mismatch, and it also seems related to crypto.subtle.importKey.

I could try to fix it, but I’m not sure if that’s within the scope of the issue I picked. Since this feels a bit tricky and unrelated to the original feature request, I’m not confident I’m the right fit to continue here.

Thank you for giving me the chance, even though I didn’t get to contribute directly, I’ve learned a lot from setting up the repo and exploring the code.

[dahlia]

No worries, it isn't due to you. It's #423. Until #423 be fixed, you could work around this by downgrading Deno to 2.4.x.