[JDEV] Jabber DevZone News - Web Client Services Alpha Release

[Jabber DevZone]

Web Client Services Alpha Release

The following was posted by jer at jabber.org via the Jabber DevZone web site (http://dev.jabber.org/):

First, before I get started, I want to clearly state that this is an
alpha 
developer release, if you don't have the time to play around and
figure out 
what's broken (and help fix it) then you probably want to wait for the
next 
release. This release is for those that would like to start or have
already 
been experimenting with the possibilities of bringing Jabber, IM,
Presence, 
HTTP, and the Web closer together. Included in this release is a
generic HTTP
parser ontop of the 1.4.1 server release, a stateless client manager
and
module loader (WCS), and many modules for public presence/message/chat
 gateways,
HTML/JavaScript based clients, and XML-RPC support. I also highly 
suggest
subscribing to the new 
 wcs-dev at jabber.org mailing list to keep up on any fixes and
additions.
 


To get started, in your 1.4.1 install you need to unpack the 
 http-0.4.tar.gz and 
 wcs-0.4.tar.gz files (cd jabber-1.4.1 && tar -xzvf http-0.4.tar.gz 
&& tar -xzvf wcs-0.4.tar.gz). In each of the http and wcs folders, 
type "make" to build the components for jabberd. After they have
built, you'll
 need to configure both of them. Here is a generic configuration
example
that you should be able to cut and paste and should work as-is: 


  
    ./http/http.so
    

      
      
        virtual.hostname.net --
        
      
      
        
      

      
      30

      
      http-dns

    
  

  
    ./dnsrv/dnsrv.so
    
      http
    
  

  
    ./http/httptest.so
  

  
    
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
      ./wcs/wcs.so
    
    
    
  
  
  After it's installed, built, and configured, simply start your
server as
 you normally would and the http component will be serving requests on
ports
 5280 and 5288. If you point your browser to the server on port 5288
(
 http://jabber.server.net:5288/) the included simple test page should

be displayed. Once that is working, you'll need to copy or move the
jabber-1.4.1/wcs/docs 
folder to a location on any web server (apache or any other will work
fine). 
In the docs folder there is a setup.pl perl script which will convert
the 
examples to your local installation and server name, run ./setup.pl
  for instructions. Once the docs and examples are configured, simply
point 
your browser to wherever they are being served from and you can run
through 
many of the demos. As you'll see, this is all very alpha and the docs
are 
sketchy at best, but if you do make sense of them and work up some
better 
docs and examples I can give you access to contribute them back.    
  Now that that's all covered, I want to stress how much work and
though
 has gone into this and how many new exciting opportunities there are
with
 this functionality. Being able to chat in real-time from any web
browser
integrated into any web site has so many possibilities. Allowing users
to
log into their Jabber account via the Web and building a fully
browser-based
GUI client should open the doors for many more developers and users to
participate
in Jabber. Not only is the Web integration great, but having HTTP
access
to a Jabber server and integrating support for the new HTTP-based
protocols 
will allow more applications to easily support Jabber. 


  The plans are to continue extending the server side WCS codebase to
expose richer methods of accessing Jabber, and boosting the
documentation
and especially examples and demos of how to use it. There are also
some browser
incompatibilities in the real-time integration (as seen by playing
with the
pub_chat demo), the old JOW (Jabber On Web) HTML and JavaScript client
needs
to be ported yet, and the conferencing demos are non-existent, plenty
of
work to do before a beta. Another toy I've always planned on doing was
a
   /. style slashbox client that could
be included into any static html page, which is at least two releases
away.
I welcome any and all help in turning WCS into a solid platform and
exploiting
the power of Jabber and the Web/HTTP, please feel welcome to join in
and
contribute. 



http://jabber.org/?oid=1102