Programming Jabber

“Required” fields

The list of fields returned in the response to the IQ-get in the jabber:iq:register namespace is actually supposed to be a list of mandatory fields:

• <name/>

• <email/>

• <username/>

• <password/>

However, with the current version of the Jabber server (1.4.1, which is our reference version for this book), this is not the case.

The <username/> and <password/> fields are mandatory; not supplying them or supplying an invalid username or password will result in an error:

SEND: <iq type='set'>
        <query xmlns='jabber:iq:register'>
          <username>leslie</username>
          <email>[e-mail]</email>
          <name>Leslie Hawke</name>
        </query>
      </iq>

RECV: <iq type='error'>
        <query xmlns='jabber:iq:register'>
          <username>leslie</username>
          <email>[e-mail]</email>
          <name>Leslie Hawke</name>
        </query>
        <error code='406'>Not Acceptable</error>
      </iq>

However, currently, failing to supply any of the other fields—the fields that are specified in the <register/> section of the JSM instance’s configuration—will not result in an error. This may be fixed in a later release. In any case, it’s no great loss; the details are simply stored in the user’s spool file on the server, and right now there’s only one situation where this information is subsequently used: in answering a browse request made to a user’s JID, the server looks up the <name/> tag from the registration data stored and uses the value there in the browse response:

SEND: <iq type='get' to='dj@yak'> <query xmlns='jabber:iq:browse'/> </iq> ...