A simple Python client implementation of `WebFinger RFC 7033 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7033>`_.
WebFinger is a discovery protocol that allows you to find information about people or things in a standardized way. See the `spec <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7033>`_ or `webfinger.net <http://webfinger.net>`_ for more information.
*finger* is a convenience method for instantiating a WebFingerClient object and making the request. The *resource* parameter is a URI of the resource about which you are querying. The optional *rel* parameter can be either a string or a list of strings that will limit the response to the specific relations. WebFinger servers are **not** required to obey the *rel* parameter, so you should handle the response accordingly.
WebFingerClient supports additional options, so check that out if *finger* does not meet your needs.
Instantiates a client object. The optional *timeout* parameter specifies the HTTP request timeout. The optional *official* parameter is a boolean that determines if the client will use `unofficial endpoints`_.
The client *finger* method prepares and executes the WebFinger request. *resource* and *rel* are the same as the parameters on the standalone *finger* method. *host* should only be specified if you want to connect to a host other than the host in the resource parameter. Otherwise, this method extracts the host from the *resource* parameter. *raw* is a boolean that determines if the method returns a WebFingerResponse object or the raw JRD response as a dict.
The WebFinger response object provides handy properties for easy access and the raw JRD response. Read the `spec for specifics of the JRD response <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7033#section-4.4>`_.
Properties
----------
subject
The URI of the thing that the response JRD describes.
aliases
A list of additional URIs that identify the subject.
properties
A dict of URIs and values that provides information about the subject.
links
A list of dicts that define external resources for the subject.
A convenience method that provides basic access to links. The *relation* parameter is a URI for the desired link. The *attr* parameter is the key of the returned value of the link that matches *relation*. Returns a string if *relation* and *attr* exist, otherwise *None*.
The response JRD may have multiple entries with the same relation URI. The *rel* method will select the first one, since order is meant to imply priority. If you need to see all of the values, you'll have to iterate over the *links* property and pull them out yourself.
::
>>> rel = 'http://webfinger.net/rel/avatar'
>>> [l.get('href') for l in rel.links if l.get('rel') == rel]
While Facebook and Twitter do not officially support WebFinger, the `webfinger-unofficial project <https://github.com/snarfed/webfinger-unofficial>`_ provides a proxy for basic subject information. By default, python-webfinger will attempt to use unoffical the endpoints for facebook.com and twitter.com resource domains. This behavior can be disabled by passing *True* to the *official* parameter::