Tigase Server Elements

To make it easier to get into the code below are defined basic terms in the Tigase server world and there is a brief explanation how the server is designed and implemented. This document also points you to basic interfaces and implementations which can be used as example code reference.

Logically all server code can be divided into 3 kinds of modules: components, plug-ins and connectors.

  1. Components are the main element of Tigase server. Components are a bigger piece of code which can have separate address, receive and send stanzas, and be configured to respond to numerous events. Sample components implemented for Tigase server are: c2s connection manager, s2s connection manager, session manager, XEP-0114 - external component connection manager, MUC - multi user char rooms.
  2. Plug-ins are usually small pieces of code responsible for processing specific XMPP stanzas. They don’t have thier own address. As a result of stanza processing they can produce new XMPP stanzas. Plug-ins are loaded by session manager component or the c2s connection manager component. Sample plug-ins are: vCard stanza processing, jabber:iq:register to register new user accounts, presence stanza processing, and jabber:iq:auth for non-sasl authentication.
  3. Connectors are modules responsible for access to data repositories like databases or LDAP to store and retrieve user data. There are 2 kinds of connectors: authentication connectors and user data connectors. Both of them are independent and can connect to different data sources. Sample connectors are: JDBC database connector, XMLDB - embedded database connector, Drupal database connector, and the LibreSource database connector.

There is an API defined for each kind of above modules and all you have to do is enable the implementation of that specific interface. Then the module can be loaded to the server based on it’s configuration settings. There is also abstract classes available, implementing these interfaces to make development easier.

Here is a brief list of all interfaces to look at and for more details you have to refer to the guide for specific kind of module.