maxogden / Monocles

h1. Monocles (formerly CouchAppSpora)

h3. ..is (more or less) Diaspora implemented on CouchDB

p. The Diaspora source code was initially "released":http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html on September 15th, 2010. This project is an implementation of the Diaspora protocol as a CouchApp built entirely on CouchDB.

h3. Why?

p. CouchDB is a good fit for a federated social web node due to it's robust replication, HTTP and JSON APIs. Diaspora is an attractive implementation of a federated social web application. I want to marry the front end and features of Diaspora, but build them on the flexible replication of CouchDB. The resulting application is written in pure Javascript and HTML and only requires CouchDB in order to run.

h3. Protocols

p. I am shooting for Social Web Acid Test level 0 (SWAT0) compliance by implementing the OStatus stack. Since Couch can use CommonJS, I started a project called "ostatus-js":http://github.com/maxogden/ostatus-js to write the OStatus protocols in server side javascript. To learn more about how monocles works and interoperates with other seeds, check out "this wiki page":http://github.com/maxogden/monocles/wiki/Protocols-and-examples.

p. !http://i.imgur.com/J0HPe.png!

h3. Hosting your own

p. You can run monocles anywhere that you can run CouchDB, and since it's a CouchApp, the entire application lives inside your database and can be replicated from any other monocles seed. To demonstrate the built in replication that you get with CouchDB:

• Get a CouchDB somewhere! You can get a hosted Couch from "Cloudant":http://cloudant.com or "IrisCouch":http://iriscouch.com, a downloadable Couch from "CouchBase":http://www.couchbase.com/downloads, or an Android Couch from the Android Marketplace
• Make a database and set up bidirectional continuous replication from @http://monocl.es/[email protected] (or any other monocles instance) to your new database.
• Visit "http://yourcouch/yourdb/==_design/monocles/_==rewrite":http://yourcouch/yourdb/_design/monocles/_rewrite

h3. TO-DO (aka 'how to contribute')

p. Hack on the interface and make it do something cool! The bulk of the application logic is in @[email protected], @[email protected] and @[email protected]

p. Check out the "Issues page":http://github.com/maxogden/monocles/issues

p. If you've never worked with CouchApps before, I'd highly recommend learning more about them at "couchapp.org":http://couchapp.org/

h3. License

p. TODO: I think I have to comply with Diaspora's AGPLV3 License...