Support multiple server and identities connections

This has been outlined originally in the new funding proposal of 2021: %Y2iyBckEhcWvxX6a1+9ELeP6wFYD80QNdhvR50V1C7E=.sha256.

Multiple identity support

There I said it, let’s make it bold MULTIPLE IDENTITIES. Now, the developers reading this, please get your heads back into their natural position, all of you turned them to the side while reading this.

How will this work: Patchfox is a client-only client, and it will remain so. What I’ll implement is: if you run multiple servers on the same machine, such as running js sbot on a port and golang sbot on a different port, Patchfox will leverage the browser multiple tabs to connect to both of them.

Already in Patchfox, each tab opens its own connection to the running ssb server. It uses the saved identity. By saving multiple identities, the user would be able to open new tabs using some specific saved identity, thus connecting to a different local server.

SSB support is already contained in /core/platforms/ssb. To support go-ssb, I’d make a core/platforms/go-ssb that exposed the same high-level API as the other one. When connecting to a server, Patchfox would decide which identity and platform should be used, and all the rest would remain the same (after some refactoring for packages that access sbot directly).

THIS CAN WORK. This will help go-ssb development. This will help any kind of new server development.

For this feature to be completed, the following issues need to be closed:

• #104 - Find all uses of direct sbot access.
• #105 - Improve nodejs-ssb platform.
• #106 - Create flag for packages to detect which platform is being used.
• #107 - Refactor settings package to account for multiple identities.
• #108 - Refactor add-on initialization to cater for multiple platforms and identities.

[soapdog]

@rmdes

ssb.armada.digital is failing CORS requests, that is why it is not working.

As for removing identities, I’ll check here it appears the button is broken. At least here the button appears not to be wired up.

[soapdog]

Patchfox can’t connect to Manyverse because Manyverse is not listening on WebSockets. Most of the other SSB apps listen on WebSockets and TCP. Unfortunately web apps (and add-ons) don’t have access to raw TCP connections, thus making it impossible to connect to Manyverse.

Be aware that the support for multiple servers and identities is on-going. At the moment, Patchfox only supports NodeJS-based SSB Servers. I’m adding support for go-ssb and browser-ssb, but those are not ready. Patchfox can connect to servers from Patchwork, Scuttle Shell, Patchfoo, Oasis, Patchbay, or running your own server manually from the command-line.