Develop app for local Pod

1

Hi,
I recently learnt more about Solid and I am very excited with the idea! It is valuable even now when the technology is not widespread!
Now I am impatient to:

  • host one or more Pods
  • develop Solid applications

Honestly, I hoped it would be easier…

I followed Getting Started — Inrupt Java Client Libraries and then installed the CSS. Now I have a lot of questions and I hope you will tolerate bothering you with them.

First of all I tried to use the Java app from the guide with my local Pod. For that I suppose I need application registration functionality. I prepared the following query for this purpose:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/idp/register
-H “Content-Type: application/json”
-d ‘{
“client_name”: “My Solid App”,
“redirect_uris”: [“some url”],
“grant_types”: [“authorization_code”, “refresh_token”],
“response_types”: [“code”],
“scope”: “openid profile offline_access”,
“token_endpoint_auth_method”: “client_secret_basic”
}’

It works well with inrupt dot net, but it returns 401 with my CSS installation.

Here is how I start the CSS:

npx @solid/community-server -c @css:config/file.json -f .data

where file.json is the one from the github repo for CSS.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. Is there any how-to documentation I can use?

1 Like
2

Hi there, welcome to the Solid Forum :D.

Is there any reason why you want to use Java to create your app? Currently, there are a lot more tools if you’re trying to implement a Web App (using Javascript/TypeScript). And nowadays, you can achieve pretty much anything you could achieve with a native app in the web.

You can find about some web-based tools in https://rdfjs.dev and Tools and libraries overview · Solid

It’s perfectly fine if you want to use Java though, just keep in mind it will be harder as there are less resources. I guess it also depends on what you have experience building, have you built any web apps in the past? or apps with Java?

1 Like
3

Hi Noel and thanks for your reply! I read about your work and I share your excitement with solid!
Yeah - my expereience is with Java and not very much with js/ts.
Thanks for the links! I tried “Tools and libraries” and almost nothing worked for me :sweat_smile: Nevertheless, is more likely I don’t know how to use them than them being outdated/not maintained. It is quite a bumpy ride for sure.

2 Likes
4

Unfortunately there is no standard way for a bot to authenticate to a server. CSS does it differently than NSS (inrupt.net) does and different than ESS (inrupt.com) does. You need to look up the specifics for CSS. Browser access is more standardized.

5

Thanks for the reply, @jeffz!
I’m puzzled, though. I thought I just can’t find the proper documentation. I either don’t get it or what you are saying implies that applications shall care if they are dealing with CSS/NSS/ESS/etc. when authorizing against a POD. One would expect there to be a standard approach that works regardless of the Solid Store.

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Yes, one would expect that. But Solid is evolving. There are some areas where standardization is not complete and authenticating bots is one.

7

Thanks for joining us.

It looks like you’re trying to do Solid-OIDC. I would need to see the exact 401 error to help you further, but I believe you are missing the “webid” scope in your “scopes” array, and should get rid of “profile”. If that doesn’t work/help, you can always use the client credentials authentication method if that will fit your use case.