nips/05.md
David A. Harding 57b86d2482 NIP05: warn about CORS policies that may inhibit JS apps
JS Nostr apps such as Branle may not be able to load `nostr.json` files due to CORS policies.  Update NIP05 to warn about this and provide hints for troubleshooting and fixing the issue.
2022-05-07 17:18:23 -03:00

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NIP-05
======
Mapping Nostr keys to DNS-based internet identifiers
----------------------------------------------------
`draft` `optional` `author:fiatjaf`
On events of type `0` (`set_metadata`) one can specify the key `"nip05"` with an [internet identifier](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-3.4.1) (an email-like address) as the value. Although there is a link to a very liberal "internet identifier" specification above, NIP-05 assumes the `<local-part>` part will be restricted to the characters `a-z0-9-_.`, case insensitive.
Upon seeing that, the client splits the identifier into `<local-part>` and `<domain>` and use these values to make a GET request to `https://<domain>/.well-known/nostr.json?name=<local-part>`.
The result should be a JSON document object with a key `"names"` that should then be a mapping of names to public keys. If the public key for the given `<name>` matches the `pubkey` from the `set_metadata` event, the client then concludes that the given pubkey can indeed be referenced by its identifier.
### Example
If a client sees an event like this:
```json
{
"pubkey": "b0635d6a9851d3aed0cd6c495b282167acf761729078d975fc341b22650b07b9",
"kind": 0,
"content": "{\"name\": \"bob\", \"nip05\": \"bob@example.com\"}"
...
}
```
It will make a GET request to `https://example.com/.well-known/nostr.json?name=bob` and get back a response that will look like
```json
{
"names": {
"bob": "b0635d6a9851d3aed0cd6c495b282167acf761729078d975fc341b22650b07b9"
}
}
```
That will mean everything is alright.
## Notes
### User Discovery implementation suggestion
A client can also use this to allow users to search other profiles. If a client has a search box or something like that, a user may be able to type "bob@example.com" there and the client would recognize that and do the proper queries to obtain a pubkey and suggest that to the user.
### Showing just the domain as an identifier
Clients may treat the identifier `_@domain` as the "root" identifier, and choose to display it as just the `<domain>`. For example, if Bob owns `bob.com`, he may not want an identifier like `bob@bob.com` as that is redundant. Instead Bob can use the identifier `_@bob.com` and expect Nostr clients to show and treat that as just `bob.com` for all purposes.
### Reasoning for the `/.well-known/nostr.json?name=<local-part>` format
By adding the `<local-part>` as a query string instead of as part of the path the protocol can support both dynamic servers that can generate JSON on-demand and static servers with a JSON file in it that may contain multiple names.
### Allowing access from Javascript apps
Javascript Nostr apps may be restricted by browser [CORS][] policies that prevent them from accesing `nostr.json` on the user's domain. When CORS prevents JS from loading a resource, the JS program sees it as a network failure identical to the resource not existing, so it is not possible for a pure-JS app to tell the user for certain that the failure was caused by a CORS issue. JS Nostr apps that see network failures requesting `nostr.json` files may want to recommend to users that they check the CORS policy of their servers, e.g.:
```bash
$ curl -sI https://example.com/.well-known/nostr.json?name=bob | grep ^Access-Control
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
```
Users should ensure that their `nostr.json` is served with the HTTP header `Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *` to ensure it can be validated by pure JS apps running in modern browsers.
[CORS]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS