[jdev] current state of "invisibility"

[Matthew Wild]

On 30 April 2012 17:17, Daniel Dormont <dan at greywallsoftware.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've been asked to add invisibility to my XMPP-based application. The server
> I'm running currently, ejabberd 2.1.x, supports XEP-0018 but I get the
> impression that relying on it is a bad idea. If I will be using clients that
> are mostly, but perhaps not entirely in some cases, under my own control (ie
> web based clients where I've personally written the code), what is the
> recommended practice for supporting invisibility? Should I just follow the
> recommendation of XEP-0126? Is there an alternative that today's software
> supports?

For general compatibility, XEP-0126 is best - unlike XEP-0018 it
doesn't mess with core XMPP. From a high level it's also far from
ideal though. While privacy lists are already implemented in many
clients and servers, it makes for one ugly and complicated way to say
"Hey, I just want to be online without people seeing me!".

My eggs are in XEP-0186's basket. It would take an hour at most to add
support for it to Prosody, and it's likely as trivial for other
servers too. It also couldn't get any easier from the client's
perspective.

The main problem is that this isn't moving - most people, XMPP
developers at any rate, seem comfortable /enough/ with the current
situation to not be rushing to implement this.

Therefore if any client has or is implementing XEP-0186 support and
wants to test it against Prosody then feel free to poke me off-list.

> Also, regarding XEP-0126 specifically: again, assuming the client is under
> my control, is there a way to know at time of login whether the current user
> has already created the relevant privacy lists?

You can get the list of lists:
http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0016.html#protocol-retrieve

Regards,
Matthew