Add name and image properties to subscriptions

[capjamesg]

In my Microsub implementation, I have added support for two "follow" properties that are not yet defined in the proposed specification: name and photo. These properties let me present the feeds to which someone is subscribed in a more user-friendly way. Before this change, I could only see the feed URLs to which I should subscribe. This is not intuitive for most people.

To create a subscription (to "follow" a feed), one must specify:

• The URL of the resource to which one wants to subscribe.
• The channel in which the subscription should be created.

I would like to see this extended to include two new properties:

• name: The name of the feed to which one is subscribed.
• photo: A logo representative of the feed.

These two new attributes would allow richer displays of feed names.

Servers could optionally provide a name and a photo value. These could be gathered in various ways depending on the feed type to to which a user wants to subscribe. How to collect information for these properties should not be defined in the specification as they are out of scope. If a feed name is not found, a server should be asked to fall back to set the name as equal to the URL value, reducing the amount of validation a client needs to do on the front-end.

Here is how I display the feeds to which I am subscribed in a channel.

[jalcine]

If this is about adding a name and photo to the response of a feed, I'm definitely in favor of that. I think I would let the server figure out what icon to use for each feed for now.

(Originally published at: https://jacky.wtf/2022/4/Bv/BvY7RuYV-_SOkx6Q0rFfM2yd)