Converse.js is an open source, web based, XMPP/Jabber chat client, similar to Facebook chat, but with added support for multi-user chatrooms.
It is a Javascript application that you can include in your website, thereby providing it with instant messaging functionality.
You will also need access to an XMPP/Jabber server. You can connect to any public, federated XMPP server, or you can set one up yourself, thereby maintaining stricter privacy controls.
It's possible to enable single-site login, whereby users already authenticated in your website will also automatically be logged in on the chat server, but this will require custom code on your server.
An add-on product that does exactly this, already exists for the Plone CMS. Hopefully in the future more such add-ons will be created for other platforms.
If you have integrated Converse.js into any other CMS or framework, please let me know and I'll mention it on this page.
Features
- Single-user chat
- Multi-user chat in chatrooms (XEP 45)
- vCard support (XEP 54)
- Service discovery (XEP 30)
- Contact rosters
- Manually or automically subscribe to other contacts
- Accept or decline contact requests
- Roster item exchange (XEP 144)
- Chat statuses (online, busy, away, offline)
- Custom status messages
- Typing notifications
- Third person messages (/me )
Screencasts
- Screencast 1: Integrated into a Plone site via collective.xmpp.chat.
- Screencast 2: A static HTML page with Converse.js. Here we chat to external XMPP accounts on Jabber.org and Gmail.
Demo
Click this link or click the link on the bottom right corner of this page.
You can log in with any existing federated Jabber/XMPP account, or create a new one at any of these providers:
There is also a list of public XMPP providers on xmpp.net.Note: currently the demo doesn't work in Internet Explorer older than 10. This is due to lacking support for CORS, a standard which enables cross-domain XmlHttpRequests. There are ways around this, but it hasn't been a priority for me to implement them for this demo.
See here for more information.
Is it secure?
Yes. In this demo Converse.js makes an SSL encrypted connection to a secure connection manager. The connection manager then uses SSL and TLS to connect to an XMPP server.
That said, the developers don't assume any liability for any loss or damages as a result of using this software or demo. Use this demo at your own risk.Session support
The chat client will disconnect whenever you reload the page. If you want the user's session to persist across page reloads, you can establish an authenticated connection on the server side and then attach to this connection in your browser.
Converse.js already supports this usecase, but you'll have to do more manual work yourself.
Documentation
The documentation is still a bit sparse and a work in progress. Nevertheless, you can read what's already written here.
Tests
We use the Jasmine testing framework to write tests. The tests can be run in the browser and can be viewed here.
Credits and Dependencies
Converse.js depends on a few third party libraries, including:
Some images were taken from Plone and the Open Icon Library.
Licence
Converse.js is released under both the MIT and GPL licenses.