External Component How-To

Sometimes it is not entirely clear how to approach certain scenarios when translating one "legacy" IM service (AIM/ICQ/MSN/etc) into XMPP. Here we will gather together knowledge of ways to handle such scenarios.

Idle Time

In many other IM protocols, there is a separate status of "idle time" that is not related to what your actual away/available/whatever status is. You can be away with an idle time of 5 minutes, or available with an idle time of 2 days. There may be a reason why the latter wants to be shown as available despite being idle so long. That said, simply making an idle time over X minutes turn into away is not a true representation of what the legacy IM service was indicating. As such, I was pointed at a way to indicate idle time using XEP-0108. The following is an example of how I might indicate idle time:

<iq type='set'
    from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'
    to='pubsub.shakespeare.lit'
    id='activity1'>
  <pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
    <publish node='generic/juliet-activity'>
      <item id='current'>
        <activity xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/activity'>
          <inactive/>
        </activity>
        <headers xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/shim'>
          <header name='Start'>2005-03-17T19:00:00Z</header>
        </headers>
      </item>
    </publish>
  </pubsub>
</iq>

The start time here is when I -started- being idle. The client should then calculate the difference between "now" and this start time. That way there's no need to keep sending "i'm idle for 5 minutes", "i'm idle for 10 minutes" updates over and over again. Instead, I publish one "I'm idle since" and then I'm done until I no longer want to be idle.

Now how to make this a tad more practical? Probably something involving PEP. Will investigate this later.