Programming Jabber

jabber:iq:time

The jabber:iq:time namespace qualifies an IQ-based conversation to make or respond to a query on time information.

To query the time at a particular entity, an IQ-get request like this is sent:

SEND: <iq type='get' id='time_19' to='conference.yak'>
        <query xmlns='jabber:iq:time'/>
      </iq>

Three pieces of information—the time in UTC (coordinated universal time) format, the local time zone, and a nice display version of the local time—are returned in response to such a query:

RECV: <iq type='result' id='time_19' to='sabine@yak/Work'
          from='conference.yak'>
        <query xmlns='jabber:iq:time'>
          <utc>20010520T08:55:38</utc>
          <tz>GMT</tz>
          <display>Sun May 20 09:55:38 2001</display>
        </query>
      </iq>

The format of the <tz/> and <display> tags is not fixed. While this is what the Conferencing service returns, a response from the JIM client would give “GMT Standard Time” and “20/05/01 09:55:38,” respectively.

Note

If you consider that certain components can be connected to the Jabber backbone but be running on different hosts in different time zones, communicating over TCP socket connections (as described in Section 4.16 in Chapter 4), this may be more useful than you initially think.