How to create a messaging service??

Question

I want to create a messaging service that uses the XMPP protocol. How would I implement the server-side as well as the client side aspects of this service? I know I would need a server (like Jabberd 2) that runs the messaging framework. How hard would this be to set up and get running? Also what would be the best way to hook up a client program into this service? How would i start pushing messages from one client, through the server, to another client?

Answer 1

Server: there are many out there, see http://xmpp.org/software/servers.shtml for a list.

I've used OpenFire in the past, it's fairly straightforward to set up.

You can add a library like xmppframework to your Cocoa project to make it a client, and configure it to talk to your XMPP server.

Each client gets an identifier (called a 'jid') of the form: [email protected], and you send messages from one client to the other by addressing them to the jid of the intended recipient.

If you want to play around with simple examples in a scripting language, you can use something like the examples in the python xmpp library to see how it all works. Use an xmpp client like psi to connect as one jid and use the examples to connect as another jid to send/receive messages through the server.