[jdev] Re: design of library APIs

Pete Birkinshaw pete at binary-ape.org
Mon Sep 13 14:53:01 CDT 2004


jdev-request at jabber.org wrote:
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. design of library APIs (Lucas Nussbaum)
> Hi,
> 
> I am considering writing yet another library for Jabber, this one in
> Ruby. I'd like to allow easy migration from other libraries, so I'd like
> to know which library I should use as an example.
> 
> Which are the libraries known to have a good API design, for both client
> and component, and low-level and high-level handling of the protocol ?
> 
> Thank you,

Hi,

Jabber::Connection, (Perl) appeals to me for server side stuff. It's 
very light: it handles the connections and callbacks, and everything 
else is done by processing the XML. Jabber/XMPP content is really just 
XML, after all. Jabber::Connection comes with Jabber::NodeFactory, which 
is a nice little XML library.

If you wanted to write a more complete API you could always layer it 
over a simple library like this.

  Jabber::Connection hasn't been updated for a while, and you'll need 
the latest version from here: 
<http://www.pipetree.com/jabber/jabberconnection/>

I'm not sure if one Library/API will be suitable for both server-side 
and client-side programs. For clients I actually prefer Net::Jabber, 
because with clients there's more non-protocol work to do, and 
Net::Jabber lets me get on with that.

Pete.

-- 

Pete Birkinshaw
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