Scripting Introduction - Hello World!

Artur Hefczyc <artur.hefczyc@tigase.net> v2.0, June 2014: Reformatted for AsciiDoc. :toc: :numbered: :website: http://tigase.net :Date: 2010-01-06 20:18

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This document is the first in series describing scripting support in the Tigase server. It shows how to load, install, update and call a script. It contains also an introduction to the scripting API with the first "Hello world!" like example.

Since the Tigase version 4.3.1 the server supports scripting for administrator commands.

In theory many different languages can be used to write scripts and the only requirement is that the support JSR-223 for the language. More details can be found on the Java scripting project site.

In practice some languages are better supported than others. At the moment the most recommended is Groovy, although following languages are also confirmed to be working: Scala, Python and Ruby. The Tigase SVN contains a few examples for these languages.

Please note, the default Tigase installation contains only libraries for Groovy. Adding support for a different language is as simple as copying a few JAR files to the Tigase libs/ directory.

All the examples presented in this guide are also available as ready to use scripts in the Tigase SVN repository in directory: src/main/groovy/tigase/admin.

The scripting utilises only standard XMPP extensions and is by no means specific to any particular solution. I use and prefer Psi client. The whole guide and all the screenshots are created using Psi client. You can, however, use any other client which supports these extensions as well. As the whole thing is based on the service discovery and ad-hoc commands you need an XMPP client with a good support for both features.

To follow the guide and run all the examples you need installed Tigase server in version at least 4.3.1 and you have to connect to the server as administrator.