[JDEV] Q: Does roster require manual management?

[David Waite]

Jabber uses the roster as its list for presence subscription management, with a few gui addins for simplicity sake. (e.g. nickname and groups).

The roster tracks subscription requests via an 'ask' attribute and the 'subscription' attribute. ask is set to subscribe or unsubscribe while a(n) [un]subscribe request is pending. There are also extra fields in the server .xml file per user, but those are a server implementation deal.

-David Waite

Jens Alfke wrote:

> I'm still confused about the server-side roster. Is the roster entity that's managed by means of jabber:iq:roster queries the same thing as the current set of people whose presence I'm subscribed to? Or is it a separate entity that the client needs to manually keep in sync with subscribe requests?
>
> That is, if I subscribe to someone's presence by sending <presence type=subscribe>, will the server automatically add them to my roster, or do I also need to send an <iq type=set> tag with a jabber:iq:roster query? (And ditto for unsubscribing?)
>
> [The JPO and JPG authors might take note ... I consider this one of the most confusing aspects of Jabber so far. It deserves to be described in its own section, not just buried in a discussion of the XML schema for jabber:iq:roster.]
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Jens