Last week we released version 2.0.0 of qpost, our open-source social microblogging network. In this blog post I want to detail what we have planned for the future of qpost and what’s coming next.

Public API (#25)
With qpost’s re-release we have been working on a public API. This API is currently being utilized by the new front-end, however it uses session tokens for authorization. We want to add an alternative, which allows third-party developers to register their applications with us and authorize users without the need of them submitting their username and password.

I personally am really pushing for making the API public as I want to welcome more third-party developers on qpost and turn it into a platform. I used to be a very active Twitter user and always enjoyed working on bots, that post images from reddit or other platforms automatically, and so did a lot of other people. I think if we manage to bring bot developers to qpost and support them, this could help boost the amount of varying content on the platform by a lot.

Further backend improvements (#22)
Currently we use HTTP polling for automatic fetching of new posts and notifications on the front-end, a technique we have taken from the first version of qpost. In the future, this is supposed to be replaced by a socket server, that automatically notifies the clients of new events happening. This replacement will significantly reduce the strain on our servers and allow users to receive posts and notifications in real-time.

Messages (#23)
Messages are a basic feature, that has been planned for qpost ever since it’s first release version. We want to allow users to communicate in any way they want. If you want to send a quick message to someone, you should be able to do that within qpost. Messages have been on the backlog for a very long time, because they depend on the previously mentioned issue (socket server). We did not want to use HTTP polling for messages, since it would drastically impact the experience.

Smartphone applications
Apps for iOS and Android are something that has been planned for a long time as well. We want to release qpost on their respective platforms, to open it up for more users more easily. This issue in particular will take more time, until then you can use qpost as a progressive web app to use qpost on your smartphone.

We have many more things planned for qpost in the future. You can read more about it on our GitLab issue list.

Beyond our actual app features, we also want to spend more time marketing and growing qpost to have more users on the platform.

We are now testing the new login API and using it on the production versions of mcskinhistory.com and kostenlos-wlan.in

Please report any issues, we will soon announce when the proper documentation will be released!

In the past days we’ve been working on v3 of the Gigadrive login API. As you may know, we’ve introduced the official Gigadrive API 2 years ago to allow users to have one central account for multiple Gigadrive and third party services. While v1 allowed services to spoof passwords and emails without us or the user knowing, we introduced v2 along with it’s login keys that are passed through with the user to transfer user data but not sensitive data like passwords.

We have since created v3 which adds the ability to register applications, authorize them on a user account and maintain user data. Since v2’s login keys expired 2 hours after the login took place it was hard to refresh user data without forcing the user to login again. v3 introduces permanent tokens that may be used to fetch user data at any point.

It also adds this nice authorization screen that shows information about the application that is being authorized and what scopes the application gets access to.

The user settings show what applications you have authorized and allow you to remove access at any time. Once a user removes an application from their account, a deletion script is triggered that the application owner specified when creating their app. This deletion script will remove all data the application has on the user.

We plan on releasing this version of the API in the coming days along with a documentation for application creators. If you want to get access to the new API once it releases, contact us at support@gigadrivegroup.com.