node-xmpp

idiomatic XMPP library for node.js

Installation

With package manager npm:

npm install node-xmpp

Or, on Debian wheezy & sid:

apt-get install libnode-node-xmpp

Thanks to Jonas Smedegaard!

Motivation

You like Strophe.js? You bought a copy of Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery? You even want to use the same XMPP code for the web and node.js? Then you're wrong here: go to xmppjs.

Objectives of node-xmpp:

• Use node.js conventions, especially EventEmitter, ie. for write buffer control
• Fast parsing, node-expat was written with this library in mind
• Client support for both XMPP clients and components
• Optional server infrastructure with Router
• After authentication, leave trivial protocol bits to the user (later we could offer helpers for entity capabilities hashing, etc)

Features

• Client authentication with SASL DIGEST-MD5, PLAIN, ANONYMOUS, X-FACEBOOK-PLATFORM
• _xmpp-client._tcp SRV record support
• Simple JID parsing with Stringprep normalization
• XML builder & serialization
• xmlns-aware
• Component connections
• Run your own server/talk to other servers with xmpp.Router

Dependencies

• node-expat
• ltx

Optional

• node-stringprep: for icu-based string normalization.

Design

Inheritance tree and associations:

┌────────────┐1     1┌────────────┐
│ net.Stream ├───────┤ Connection │
└────────────┘       └────────────┘
                           ↑
      ┌────────────┬───────┴───┐
      │            │           │
┏━━━━━┷━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━┷━━━━━┓ ┌───┴────┐
┃  Client  ┃ ┃ Component ┃ │ Server │
┗━━━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━┛ └────────┘
                               ↑
         ┌─────────────────────┤
         │                     │
┌────────┴───────┐ ┌───────────┴────┐
│ OutgoingServer │ │ IncomingServer │
└─────────────┬──┘ └───┬────────────┘
         0..* │        │ 0..*
      creates │        │ accepts
             ┏┷━━━━━━━━┷┓
             ┃  Router  ┃
             ┗━━━━━━━━━━┛

This foundation is complemented by two basic data structures:

• JID: a Jabber-Id, represented as a triple of user, domain, resource
• Element: any XML Element

Desires about the API? Propose them ASAP!

Building XML Elements

strophejs' XML Builder is very convenient for producing XMPP stanzas. node-xmpp includes it in a much more primitive way: the c(), cnode() and t() methods can be called on any Element object, returning the new child element.

This can be confusing: in the end, you will hold the last-added child until you use up(), a getter for the parent. Connection.send() first invokes tree() to retrieve the uppermost parent, the XMPP stanza, before sending it out the wire.

TODO

• More documentation
• More tests (Using Vows)