Pandacap

Pandacap is an ASP.NET Core application written in a mix of C# and F#. It's designed to be deployed to an Azure Web App, with its own Cosmos DB NoSQL database, blob storage account, and Key Vault. See the git README for more information.

Authentication for the instance owner is determined by an Entra app registration in Azure whose ID and secret are present as configuration values in the Pandcap web app. Any Microsoft account with the appropriate permissions on the Entra app registration will be able to log in as the instance owner (generally, you only want one such account). Pandacap's ASP.NET Identity user store is separate from its main Cosmos DB data store, and is kept in memory. (This means that upon restart, Pandacap will prompt you again for a username when you log in.)

Once logged in, you can use the ASP.NET Identity tools to attach a DeviantArt or Reddit account; you won't be able to use these accounts to log in (because the user store is ephemeral), but doing so will establish API tokens for those platforms and enable the corresponding integration.

Pandacap makes its Gallery and Text Posts pages available as Atom and RSS feeds, and allows the instance owner to follow Atom or RSS feeds, whose posts will show up in the appropriate section of the inbox.

Podcasts are sent to their own inbox area, where Pandacap will provide a pop-out media player with rudimentary Chromecast support and an audio output device switcher, among other features.

Pandacap implements ActivityPub S2S (server-to-server) and hosts a single actor, at the same root URL that hosts the home page (e.g. https://pandacap.example.com/).

• ignore their boosts of image posts
• ignore their boosts of text posts
• ignore their images, and send all of their posts to the Text Posts section of the inbox instead of the Image Posts section (images are still shown once you click through to view the post itself)
  

Adding an ActivityPub post to your Favorites will show the post on your Favorites page (as with other platforms), but it is also equivalent to an ActivityPub Like. At this time, Pandacap does not support sending other activities such as Announce (boosting posts) or Dislike (downvotes).

Incoming ActivityPub interactions, as well as replies to your posts, appear in the Notifications section. Posts that mention you (whether from users you follow or not) appear in Notifications as well.

The current version Pandacap does not act as, or connect to, an atproto PDS. Instead, it uses a combination of methods to interact with the network directly without going through the Bluesky AppView:

• Individual DIDs or handles can be provided to Pandacap, which will store the DID and then treat the account as a feed. Each time it refreshes the feed, it will resolve the DID to a PDS and then query that PDS directly to detect changes, and (if necessary) for profile updates and any new posts (up to 20 per feed per run). This can be done without authentication.
• The instance owner can turn on Bridgy Fed, which will mirror Pandacap's ActivityPub posts and interactions onto Bluesky. (Whenever you view a Bluesky post in the inbox or favorites, Pandacap will also check to see if the post's author uses Bridgy Fed, if so, it will fetch the post again via ActivityPub, allowing you to like and reply to it.)
  
• Constellation is used to find the AT URI for your bridged posts, which adds a "View on Bluesky" button to the post's page. It's also used to find mentions, new followers, and interactions with your most recent posts for the Notifications section.

Pandacap's only use of Bluesky infrastructure is its CDN, for showing thumbnails of posts on the public Favorites page.

When you add an atproto feed to Pandacap, you can choose whether you want to include:

• The user's own Bluesky posts
• The user's Bluesky reposts
• Bluesky posts that the user liked (likely not useful, but the implementation is almost identical to how reposts work)
• The user's WhiteWind blog entries, if any

You can also choose whether to:

• include posts that don't contain any images
• include replies
• include quote posts
• ignore their images, and send all of their posts to the Text Posts section of the inbox instead of the Image Posts section (images are still shown once you click through to view the post itself)

Pandacap connects to the DeviantArt API. An OAuth connection can be established from the "Hello" link in the navbar, using ASP.NET Identity. (The account may not persist in the External Logins list, but Pandacap will store the API credentials in its data store.)

All four types of user posts can be crossposted to DeviantArt using a "Post to DeviantArt" on the post's page.

Pandacap will populate the inbox with artwork from users you watch on DeviantArt (using the API-provided feed), and with their journal entries and status updates (by querying each user's profile, although users who have not logged in since the last refresh will be skipped). It will also populate the notifications section with your DeviantArt messages and notes, and import your new DeviantArt favorites to its Favorites section.

Pandacap connects to Fur Affinity through a combination of scraping / form simulation and FAExport, using browser cookies that you paste into a Pandacap configuation page.

Artwork posts can be crossposted to Fur Affinity as submissions.

Pandacap will populate the inbox and notifications pages with artwork, posts, and notifications from Fur Affinity's notifications area. It will also import your new Fur Affinity favorites to its Favorites section (although only posts that appear on sfw.furaffinity.net will be included, regardless of your own content settings).

When connected to a Reddit account, Pandacap will import upvotes of top-level posts into the Favorites section. No integration with the inbox or notification sections is included, however.

Pandacap uses Weasyl API keys and a combination of API endpoints and scraping / form simulation.

Artwork posts can be crossposted to Weasyl as visual submissions.

Pandacap will populate the inbox and notifications pages with artwork, posts, and notifications from Weasyl's notifications area. It will also import submissions you add to your Weasyl favorites into its own Favorites section, as long as they have a "general" rating. (Importing characters or other submission types into Favorites is not supported.)

Pandacap uses a PHP proxy for all Weasyl requests, since Weasyl's IP address filters do not always allow requests from Azure data centers.

Home page

Public artwork gallery

Public status updates and journal entries

List of followed users and feeds
(sites for which Pandacap imports an extenal feed - i.e. DeviantArt - are not included)

Favorite image posts - both native (ActivityPub, Bluesky, RSS) and imported

Favorite text posts (including podcasts)

Feed management / add new feeds