Chapter 17. Writing Plugin Code

Artur Hefczyc <artur.hefczyc@tigase.net> v2.0, June 2014: Reformatted for AsciiDoc. :toc: :numbered: :website: http://tigase.net/ :Date: 2010-04-06 21:22

Previous guide describes a basic idea behind the XMPP stanza processing in the session manager. As it was already point out the processing takes place in 4 steps. A different kind of plugin is responsible for each step of processing:

  1. XMPPPreprocessorIfc - is the interface for packets pre-processing plugins.
  2. XMPPProcessorIfc - is the interface for packets processing plugins.
  3. XMPPPostprocessorIfc - is the interface for packets post-processing plugins.
  4. XMPPPacketFilterIfc - is the interface for processing results filtering.

If you look inside any of these interfaces you find only a single method. This is it. This is where all the packet processing takes place. All of them take a similar set of parameters and below is a description for all of them:

After a closer look in some of the interfaces you can see that they extend another interface: XMPPImplIfc which provides a basic meta information about the plugin implementation. Please refer to JavaDoc documentation for all details.

For purpose of this guide we are implementing a simple plugin handling all <message/> packets, that is forwarding packets to the destination address. Incoming packets are forwarded to the user connection and outgoing packets are forwarded to the external destination address. This message plugin is actually implemented already and it is available in our SVN repository. The code has some comments inside already but this guide goes deeper into the implementation details.

First of all you have to chose what kind of plugin you want to implement. If this is going to be a packet processor you have to implement XMPPProcessorIfc interface, if this is going to be pre-processor then you have to implement XMPPPreprocessorIfc interface. Of course your implementation can implement more than one interface, even all. It depends on your use case and needs. There is also an abstract helper class which you should use as a base for all you plugins. The class declaration should look like this (assuming you implement just packet processor):

public class Message extends XMPPProcessor
   implements XMPPProcessorIfc

The first thing to create is the plugin ID. This is a unique string which you put in the configuration file to tell the server to load and use the plugin. In most cases you can use XMLNS if the plugin wants packets with elements with a very specific name space. Of course there is no guarantee there is no other packet for this specific XML element too. As I want to process all messages and I don’t want to spend whole day on thinking about a cool ID let’s say our ID is: 'message'.

A plugin informs about it’s ID using following code:

private static final String ID = "message";
public String id() { return ID; }

As I mentioned before such a plugin receives only this kind of packets for processing which it is interested in. My plugin is interested only in packets with <message/> elements and only if they are in "jabber:client" namespace. To indicate all supported elements and namespaces we have to add 2 more methods:

public String[] supElements() {
  return new String[] {"message"};
}

public String[] supNamespaces()	{
  return new String[] {"jabber:client"};
}

Now we have our plugin prepared for loading it to the Tigase server. The next step is the actual packet processing method. For the complete code, please refer to the plugin in the SVN. I will only comment here on elements which might be confusing or add a few more lines of code which might be helpful in your case.

@Override
public void process(Packet packet, XMPPResourceConnection session,
	NonAuthUserRepository repo, Queue<Packet> results, Map<String, Object> settings)
	throws XMPPException {

	// For performance reasons it is better to do the check
	// before calling logging method.
	if (log.isLoggable(Level.FINEST)) {
		log.log(Level.FINEST, "Processing packet: {0}", packet);
	}

	// You may want to skip processing completely if the user is offline.
	if (session == null) {
		return;
	}    // end of if (session == null)

	try {

		// Remember to cut the resource part off before comparing JIDs
		BareJID id = (packet.getStanzaTo() != null) ? packet.getStanzaTo().getBareJID() : null;

		// Checking if this is a packet TO the owner of the session
		if (session.isUserId(id)) {

			// Yes this is message to 'this' client
			Packet result = packet.copyElementOnly();

			// This is where and how we set the address of the component
			// which should rceive the result packet for the final delivery
			// to the end-user. In most cases this is a c2s or Bosh component
			// which keep the user connection.
			result.setPacketTo(session.getConnectionId(packet.getStanzaTo()));

			// In most cases this might be skept, however if there is a
			// problem during packet delivery an error might be sent back
			result.setPacketFrom(packet.getTo());

			// Don't forget to add the packet to the results queue or it
			// will be lost.
			results.offer(result);

			return;
		}    // end of else

		// Remember to cut the resource part off before comparing JIDs
		id = (packet.getStanzaFrom() != null) ? packet.getStanzaFrom().getBareJID() : null;

		// Checking if this is maybe packet FROM the client
		if (session.isUserId(id)) {

			// This is a packet FROM this client, the simplest action is
			// to forward it to is't destination:
			// Simple clone the XML element and....
			// ... putting it to results queue is enough
			results.offer(packet.copyElementOnly());

			return;
		}

		// Can we really reach this place here?
		// Yes, some packets don't even have from or to address.
		// The best example is IQ packet which is usually a request to
		// the server for some data. Such packets may not have any addresses
		// And they usually require more complex processing
		// This is how you check whether this is a packet FROM the user
		// who is owner of the session:
		JID jid = packet.getFrom();

		// This test is in most cases equal to checking getElemFrom()
		if (session.getConnectionId().equals(jid)) {

			// Do some packet specific processing here, but we are dealing
			// with messages here which normally need just forwarding
			Element el_result = packet.getElement().clone();

			// If we are here it means FROM address was missing from the
			// packet, it is a place to set it here:
			el_result.setAttribute("from", session.getJID().toString());

			Packet result = Packet.packetInstance(el_result, session.getJID(),
				packet.getStanzaTo());

			// ... putting it to results queue is enough
			results.offer(result);
		}
	} catch (NotAuthorizedException e) {
		log.warning("NotAuthorizedException for packet: " + packet);
		results.offer(Authorization.NOT_AUTHORIZED.getResponseMessage(packet,
				"You must authorize session first.", true));
	}    // end of try-catch
}