[JDEV] URL form of JID?

[Jens Alfke]

On Saturday, September 22, 2001, at 01:06 AM, David Waite wrote:

> I'm curious - would we want to indicate something is an entity with a 
> lot of different interactions (a chatroom could be joined or have its 
> history displayed and searched; a person could be added, conversed with 
> or viewed via vCard), or do we want to represent a specific action 
> against an entity? (join chat, view vcard, add to roster, send message 
> to user)

If you put it that way :) then I agree with you that the former is 
better. Perhaps an optional qualifier could _suggest_ an action instead 
of leaving it up the client, though. That way you could have a link on 
your home page reading "Send me a message now!" and the URL would 
suggest IM'ing as the default action instead of adding to the roster.

So then we could have two queries/qualifiers:
"type=" indicates the type of ID (person, chat, ...?) If missing, 
'person' is assumed.
"action=" suggests a default action (im, chat, join, browse, 
roster, ...?) If missing, the client gets to choose an appropriate 
action based on the type.

Additional useful qualifiers might be:
"name=" provides a user-visible name for the item.
"body=" provides a default body for an IM or chat-invite (just as with a 
mailto: URL.)

Examples:
<jabber:snej at jabber.org?name=Jens%20Alfke> represents a user. Action is 
up to the client,but will probably be to open an IM or chat-invite 
window (though hopefully the client will have a way to add the person to 
the roster from such a window.)
<jabber:snej at jabber.org?name=Jens%20Alfke&action=roster> represents a 
user, with the suggested action being to add that user to your roster 
(though hopefully the UI will put up an "Are you sure?" alert first.)
<jabber:jdev at conference.jabber.org?type=chat> represents a 
conference/chat-room. Action is up to the client but will almost 
certainly be to join the chat.
<jabber:jdev at conference.jabber.org?type=chat&action=browse> represents a 
conference/chat-room. Action is to display browse info for the room 
(name, permissions, current members). One assumes the client would then 
provide the option of joining the room.

How does this sound? If people are basically OK with it, I can write it 
up in more formal style and we can start the JEP process and hammer out 
the details.

--Jens