migrating existing chat database to XMPP (jabber) db - xmpp

I have an existing chat and profile website with 250k of active users. The users have profiles and so on. Currently, I made the chat myself with ajax, but I'm moving on to the XMPP protocol.
For this I installed Openfire and got it working with a js client framework strophejs, I made a simple test client and all works fine.
What I don't know is how to, for example, add a picture or a profile to an openfire user. When I get a 'presence' update from the server I only get the username/email. I want to extend the user with a profile from my own db, or migrate my exisitng db to openfire's db, but then where do I put the profile data?
Could anyone give me some pointers here?
Thanks,
Elger

just use the vCard for storing profile information and the picture (XEP-0054) http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0054.html . Further information you can find in this book (Chapter 4): http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596521271.do .

Related

How to integrate with OpenFire XMPP server to receive roster info for users?

I need to create small auxiliary server that is part/integrates with OpenFire server in order to get roster for a given user.
I was looking for some plugin/api call that given the user JID to return his contacts and their online status.
All-in-all I may end up changing OpenFire's code but I was hoping that there is a easier solution
All though the links provided by Manasi would work for you. However those links refers to user service plugin which has been depricated by openfire.
They recommend to use REST API plugin.
You'll see list of all plugins here.
You should read about retrieving user roster and their presence .
You could try using the user service plugin of openfire that returns a host of information of the user as well as its rosters.
for documentation click here.
You can get the roster information by this url.

Setup XMPP server to use other JSON API on webserver for user storage and authentication

We are developing a consumer hardware product. Each device is registered on a central webserver and the owner also have a user account to which the device is linked. The owner may also choose to share the device with other users.
Now, to solve the problem of getting through firewalls etc we are using XMPP: the user access his/her devices using an iOS/Android app. The app connects to the XMPP-server and so does the hardware devices. So the app can access the devices by sending custom XMPP stanzas.
Currently the device and the mobile app use the same JID, so the device will allow messages only from the same bare JID as itself uses. To allow for sharing devices we are planning to use the roster instead: the device will get its own JID ("hw381983829#thexmppserver.com") and will accept stanzas from all JID's in its roster.
The problem I'm having is that the users, devices and device-sharing data are stored on the webserver. I would like to use this same information on the XMPP-server: all users and devices on the webserver are allowed to login to XMPP and the roster of a device is the same as the users that may access it. This information can be accessed through a JSON API.
One way would be to mirror changes as they happen, but I don't like that idea since there are too many steps that could go wrong.
The best solution I can think of is to let the XMPP server use the JSON API instead of its builtin database. It would be read-only, but that is not a problem since all registration and sharing should be done on the webserver.
Any ideas on how to proceed? The functionality described above is more or less all that we need: we don't need S2S, offline messages, etc. We are currently using Ejabberd, but Prosody or Openfire are perhaps better alternatives?
For authentication, it looks like this ejabberd contribution does exactly what you need:
https://github.com/processone/ejabberd-contrib/tree/master/ejabberd_auth_http
For roster, it is easy to write a custom roster module that will be hitting your HTTP backend instead of query the database thanks to ejabberd API.
You can have a look at mod_roster as a guide to implement the methods: https://github.com/processone/ejabberd/blob/master/src/mod_roster.erl

Ejabberd: How to limit the fetching of jabber user directory (JUD)

I'm developing a client jabberd application for mobile(android) using (a)Smack.
Since, in my application, the users are registered by their phone numbers, the application should be able to recognize which contact has a jabber account on the server and suggest him/her for chatting.
After googlling the web I found that there is a jabber user directory (JUD) which I can use to check there is an account for a specific mobile number or not. (I'm using UserSearchManager).
My questions:
1- It seems that there is no record in JUD for a user who has not updated his vCard yet, so I cannot find him. Is there any solution to check the existence of this kind of users?
2- It seems that by using JUD, everyone outside of my application can fetch some important information of users such as mobile numbers, emails, etc. Is there any solution to limit JUD search engine? (for example, getting only "user field" as a input and returning only "full name field" of existing accounts or other useful limitation).
So by this way, I can recognize which person from the contact list has an account on the server and also other people cannot fetch important information of the exiting users.
Any command or advice is appreciated. Thank you.
I do not think it is possible as default, without customizing ejabberd application code.

Best way to integrate an XMPP Server into Webapplication

I'm working on a middle size community project, using php and the php framework symfony2 atm.
We are planning to integrate XMPP as a support chat and premium feature for our users. The users will be able to connect via a webclient and also via normal xmpp clients.
So here are my questions:
About the Rosters: I want to have the users from the friends list listed in the users contact list. I know that this can be done with rosters. But how can I implement this on a simple and stable way? Is there a good Server implementation that can get the users roster out of a sql database like pgsql?
What happens on the client when the roster datas are beeing changed while the user is logged in on the xmpp server?
Can I group the users that are listed in the roster of a user?
Which XMPP server project would you recommend for that kind of project?
Thanks for your help in advance!
most existing XMPP servers support all popular DBRMs. So this should be no problem.
probably nothing when you make the changes directly do the database. So have to find a server where you can initiate a roster push to all connected clients. See also the XMPP RFCs for roster updates.
yes, roster groups are a core feature of XMPP.
You can find a list of XMPP servers here: http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/servers/ You have to check which servers support pgsql and allow you to update the roster and initiate the roster pushes to connected resources.

Creating a chat feature?

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.