I'm creating (yet another) mobile chat app, using Smack and ejabberd. I'm trying to ascertain the best way to implement user avatars for use in multi-user chat rooms, and also of course for roster members. Looking at possible solutions, I can see:
XEP-0008 IQ based avatars - avatars are limited to 64 by 64 pixels, too small.
XEP-0153 vCard based avatars - Easy to implement for both users in the roster and MUC rooms, however (a) sources such as this seem to indicate that one's own vcard needs to be downloaded on every login (is this strictly true? I can't see this in the specs), and (b) should be less than 96 by 96 pixels (still pretty small)
XEP-0084 User Avatar based on Personal Eventing Protocol - I'm not clear how I can retrieve avatars for all users in a multi-user chat room based on this protocol. After joining the chat room, I would need to subscribe to the metadata node of all users, and any subsequently joining users? And also unsubscribe when they leave the room? I figure this would be pretty ugly and clumsy to implement.
Can someone kindly point me in the right direction, or indicate where I may have misunderstood? Thanks.
I guess the best way to address this issue may be to store/load the images Out of band via a HTTP server. Images could be stored with a filename such as "username_imagehash.xxx". For users not in one's roster (eg strangers in a multi-user chat), we pull their avatar via a URI retrieved from their vCard PHOTO field. Each time a stranger is re/encountered, we reload their vCard, and can identify the need to redownload their photo via a change in the URI in the vCard.
Once the user is added to one's roster, we subscribe to their avatar updates via XEP-0084, publishing the same URI (see example 4. in XEP-0084).
I think this addresses all requirements, I will find out once I've implemented. I can understand that it is not done this way in standard XMPP clients as it depends on an HTTP server separate to the XMPP service (and need to handle HTTP server security - user authorization/authentication).
Feedback welcome!
Related
Currently I am using Olark for live chat on my website.
I am planning to replace it with an in house OpenFire installation.
However, there is one problem.
With Olark live chat snippet (which I embed on my website) - if a user opens the website in multiple tabs - it's prefilled with the ongoing conversation. For e.g. - you can try it on (moonclerk.com).
How do I achieve the same pre population of chat window with the ongoing conversation with OpenFire + FP WebChat?
The way we achieve it at Olark is not exactly trivial. We don't actually use an XMPP client on the end-user's side, which makes it a bit easier, but basically our transport layer is able to grab conversation events for a conversation in-progress based on a session UUID that is stored in the user's cookies. XMPP isn't involved in that process at all, for us (it is only concerned with final delivery to and from Operators).
I don't know what FastPath's architecture is like, but if you were looking for this functionality, or to add it yourself, XMPP supports retrieving some n number of messages from the message history for a client. Check out XMPPFramework - Retrieve Archived Messages From Openfire Server for more on that.
Generally in messenger services, user adds or deletes contacts and let knows server about it. Server then takes necessary actions.
However, our requirement is "server decides contacts list, makes roster changes accordingly and clients receives updates about the same". How can we achieve this in Tigase?
There is a dedicated API in the Tigase just for that. It is called a DynamicRoster. Maybe the name is the most accurate. Dynamic because it is managed by the server and it can change any time user requests the roster.
Anyway, there are code examples in the Tigase main code repository. You can have multiple dynamic rosters active at the same time and they can retrieve contacts from different locations.
There is also a roster protocol extension which allows you to keep extra information for the contacts in the dynamic roster such as phone numbers, etc... More info about this o the Tigase.org website in the devel guide section.
Hope this helps.
My company develop a product for customer support on Facebook and we want to give the representatives a way to contact the customer via Facebook Chat.
I have read the Chat API documentations and it is not clear whether users MUST be friends on Facebook in order to chat or is it just enough they both installed a Facebook app? more limitations?
any insight will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance for you answers,
Yaniv Hakim
Facebook provides an XMPP port to the outside world while internally it implements MQTT. As per XMPP specs, messaging works between two entities without they being in each other roster list (friend/contact list). However, Facebook seems to have this limitation as part of their own business requirement. I think even GoogleTalk disallows this if two federated entities try to send message to each other without being on the roster list.
In short, yes you can just send the message. You don't need a presence authorization from someone in order to send messages to them (in XMPP world). HOWEVER, some services has a policy of requiring this, despite the fact that this is not mandated by the XMPP specifications.
we're in the process of adding text chat to our dating site and I'm considering using xmpp - specifically ejabberd on the server side, and we will be implementing an ajax client.
i'd like to hear from someone with good xmpp experience - is it architecturally suitable for chat on a dating site ? in chat on a dating site anybody can chat one-on-one with anybody - they don't have to be on your 'friends' list. Also we do not want a chat room - only one-on-one chat.
Or is xmpp more suitable for the model where someone has to add you to their friends list before you can with them ?
thanks in advance.
XMPP should work fine for you. Ejabberd, depending on the number of concurrent users you have, should be a fine starting point. Consider using a BOSH library like Strophe.js in your HTML client. If you use that library, you'll want a copy of Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery, which has examples of all of the code you'll need.
You do NOT need to have presence subscriptions in place to send chat messages between users, except in specific server implementations like GoogleTalk. Reducing the number of presence subscriptions will also drastically increase the number of users you can handle concurrently.
I need to include chat, in my application. People sign in the chat and create their user and chat to other users. However it needs to be like facebook chat or pingchat where you add friends you want to talk to.
Can anyone give me pointers to what i need to do? I've heard about xmpp servers but not sure if that is the right thing for my app. Any help would be much appreciated
Thanks
Is your app going to create new users, and add them in the chat list, or going to use existing users (like Gtalk, Y! Messenger etc) on existing protocols (like IRC, XMPP etc)...?
If you are going to implement your own chat system, where your users are registering in your website, then you are going to do these things:
Setup your website
Create a protocol (that's, how you pass messages)
Write and implement an API (in PHP, ASP etc)
Connect that API with your iPhone app.
How it works?
You keep a table of chat messages. The table include:
Chat_From
Chat_To
Chat_Message
Timestamp
All what you do is, when you start a Chat session from Alice to Bob, you just enter them in the table. Next, you fetch the row from the Web Server to your App, by calling your PHP file (say, http://mychatserver.com/getChat.php) based on the condition SELECT CHAT_MESSAGE FROM CHAT_TABLE WHERE CHAT_FROM="ALICE" AND CHAT_TO="BOB";. This message is displayed in your App.
This process should be performed repeatedly, with an interval of, say 1 sec.
I hope you got this idea.