Programming Jabber

What’s Inside

This book is not particularly about IM per se. Nor is it about the bridges to other IM systems. It’s about the essence, the ideas, and the potential behind that concept and reality called Jabber.

You will learn about the Jabber protocol and how to use Jabber’s technology to implement not only IM-based solutions but also solutions that don’t involve inane chat. You’ll learn how to install and configure your own Jabber server. You will discover more about the features of Jabber that give it its propensity for being an ideal messaging glue for many communication solutions; all of Jabber’s technology features—the building blocks and the protocol itself—are explained; and you’ll get to know how Jabber can be implemented in a variety of situations—some involving IM, others not—through a series of application and problem scenarios with fully working code examples, or recipes, in Perl, Python, and Java.

Here’s a brief overview of what’s in the book:

Part I

The first part of this book provides you with an introduction to Jabber; you’ll learn about its features, why it’s more than an IM system, and how to install and configure a Jabber server of your own.

Chapter 1

We begin with an imaginary conversation with human and application participants that shows how Jabber provides the supporting messaging “plasma.” A short script shows how simple it is to make use of Jabber’s power.

Chapter 2

We take a look at some of the features—the nature—of Jabber, to understand why Jabber ...