Programming Jabber

jabber:iq:agents

Whereas the jabber:iq:agent namespace is used in a query of an individual Jabber agent, or service, the jabber:iq:agents namespace is used in a query to retrieve a list of these agents.

As mentioned in the description for the jabber:iq:agent namespace, the Jabber server configuration (in the JSM custom configuration section) in earlier releases contained an <agents/> tag, which was used to list the agents that were available on the Jabber server. The listing looked like this:

<agents>
  <!-- Note: this <agents/> listing is not used in 1.4.1 -->
  <agent jid='users.jabber.org'>
    <name>Jabber User Directory</name>
    <description>
      You may register and create a public searchable profile,
      and search for other registered Jabber users.
    </description>
    <service>jud</service>
    <register/>
    <search/>
  </agent>
  <agent jid='...'>
    ...
  </agent>
  ...
</agents>

The <agents/> listing has now been superseded by the <browse/> tag. In fact, when responding to jabber:iq:agents and jabber:iq:browse queries, the Jabber server itself will refer to the same <browse/> listing in both cases. Here’s an example of a response to a jabber:iq:agents query:

RECV: <iq type='result' to='dj@yak/laptop' from='yak' id='agents'>
        <query xmlns='jabber:iq:agents'>
          <agent jid='users.jabber.org'>
            <name>Jabber User Directory</name>
            <service>jud</service>
            <register/>
            <search/>
          </agent>
        </query>
      </iq>

We can see that this response pretty much reflects the information in the <agents/> configuration.

For more details ...