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Try to add more information on the goals around Converse.js and on how to get
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<div class="contents local topic" id="table-of-contents">
<p class="topic-title first">Table of Contents</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#introduction" id="id1">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#what-you-will-need" id="id2">What you will need</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#an-xmpp-jabber-server" id="id3">An XMPP/Jabber server</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#connection-manager" id="id4">Connection Manager</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#overcoming-cross-domain-request-restrictions" id="id5">Overcoming cross-domain request restrictions</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#server-side-authentication" id="id6">Server-side authentication</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#session-support-i-e-single-site-login" id="id7">Session support (i.e. single site login)</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#quickstart-to-get-a-demo-up-and-running" id="id8">Quickstart (to get a demo up and running)</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#configuration" id="id9">Configuration</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#configuration-variables" id="id10">Configuration variables</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#animate" id="id11">animate</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#auto-list-rooms" id="id12">auto_list_rooms</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#auto-subscribe" id="id13">auto_subscribe</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#bosh-service-url" id="id14">bosh_service_url</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#fullname" id="id15">fullname</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#hide-muc-server" id="id16">hide_muc_server</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#prebind" id="id17">prebind</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#xhr-user-search" id="id18">xhr_user_search</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#minification" id="id19">Minification</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#minifying-javascript" id="id20">Minifying Javascript</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#minifying-css" id="id21">Minifying CSS</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
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<div class="section" id="introduction">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id1">Introduction</a><a class="headerlink" href="#introduction" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h1>
<p>Even though you can connect to public XMPP servers on the <a class="reference external" href="http://conversejs.org">conversejs.org</a>
website, <em>Converse.js</em> is not meant to be a &#8220;Software-as-a-service&#8221; (SaaS)
webchat.</p>
<p>Instead, its goal is to provide the means for website owners to add a tightly
integrated instant messaging service to their own sites.</p>
<p>As a website owner, you are expected to host <em>Converse.js</em> yourself, and to do some legwork to
properly configure and integrated it into your site.</p>
<p>The benefit in doing this, is that your users have a much more streamlined and integrated
webchat experience and that you have control over the data. The latter being a
requirement for many sites dealing with sensitive information.</p>
<p>You&#8217;ll need to set up your own XMPP server and in order to have
single-signon functionality, whereby users are authenticated once and stay
logged in to XMPP upon page reload, you will also have to add some server-side
code.</p>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="#what-you-will-need">What you will need</a> section has more information on all these
requirements.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="what-you-will-need">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2">What you will need</a><a class="headerlink" href="#what-you-will-need" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h1>
<div class="section" id="an-xmpp-jabber-server">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3">An XMPP/Jabber server</a><a class="headerlink" href="#an-xmpp-jabber-server" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h2>
<p><em>Converse.js</em> implements <a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmpp">XMPP</a> as its messaging protocol, and therefore needs
to connect to an XMPP/Jabber server (Jabber is really just a synonym for XMPP).</p>
<p>You can either set up your own XMPP server, or use a public one. You can find a
list of public XMPP servers/providers on <a class="reference external" href="http://xmpp.net">xmpp.net</a> and a list of servers that
you can set up yourself on <a class="reference external" href="http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/servers/">xmpp.org</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="connection-manager">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4">Connection Manager</a><a class="headerlink" href="#connection-manager" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h2>
<p>Your website and <em>Converse.js</em> use <a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol">HTTP</a> as protocol to communicate with
the webserver. HTTP connections are stateless and usually shortlived.</p>
<p><a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmpp">XMPP</a> on the other hand, is the protocol that enables instant messaging, and
its connections are stateful and usually longer.</p>
<p>To enable a web application like <em>Converse.js</em> to communicate with an XMPP
server, we need a proxy in the middle that can act as a bridge between the two
protocols.</p>
<p>This is the job of a connection manager. A connection manager can be either a
standalone application or part of an XMPP server. <a class="reference external" href="http://www.ejabberd.im">ejabberd</a> for example,
includes a connection manager (but you have to enable it).</p>
<p>The demo on the <a class="reference external" href="http://conversejs.org">Converse.js homepage</a> uses a a connection manager located at <a class="reference external" href="https://bind.opkode.im">https://bind.opkode.im</a>.
This connection manager is for testing purposes only, please don&#8217;t use it in
production.</p>
<div class="section" id="overcoming-cross-domain-request-restrictions">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5">Overcoming cross-domain request restrictions</a><a class="headerlink" href="#overcoming-cross-domain-request-restrictions" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>The domain of the <em>Converse.js</em> demo is <em>conversejs.org</em>, but the domain of the connection manager is <em>opkode.im</em>.
HTTP requests are made by <em>Converse.js</em> to the connection manager via XmlHttpRequests (XHR).
Until recently, it was not possible to make such requests to a different domain
than the one currently being served (to prevent XSS attacks).</p>
<p>Luckily there is now a standard called <a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing">CORS</a> (Cross-origin resource sharing), which enables exactly that.
Modern browsers support CORS, but there are problems with Internet Explorer &lt;
10.</p>
<p>IE 8 and 9 partially support CORS via a proprietary implementation called
XDomainRequest. There is a <a class="reference external" href="https://gist.github.com/1095825/6b4517276f26b66b01fa97b0a78c01275fdc6ff2">Strophe.js plugin</a> which you can use to enable
support for XDomainRequest when it is present.</p>
<p>In IE &lt; 8, there is no support for CORS.</p>
<p>If you need to support these browsers, you can add a front-end proxy in
Apache/Nginx which serves the connection manager under the same domain as your
website. This will remove the need for any cross-domain XHR support.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="server-side-authentication">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6">Server-side authentication</a><a class="headerlink" href="#server-side-authentication" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h2>
<div class="section" id="session-support-i-e-single-site-login">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7">Session support (i.e. single site login)</a><a class="headerlink" href="#session-support-i-e-single-site-login" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>It&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Jack Moffitt has a great <a class="reference external" href="http://metajack.im/2008/10/03/getting-attached-to-strophe">blogpost</a> about this and even provides an <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/metajack/strophejs/tree/master/examples/attach">example Django application</a> to demonstrate it.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="quickstart-to-get-a-demo-up-and-running">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8">Quickstart (to get a demo up and running)</a><a class="headerlink" href="#quickstart-to-get-a-demo-up-and-running" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h1>
<p>When you download a specific release of <em>Converse.js</em>, say for example version 0.3,
there will be two minified files inside the zip file.</p>
<p>For version 0.3 they will be:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>converse.0.3.min.js</li>
<li>converse.0.3.min.css</li>
</ul>
<p>You can include these two files in your website via the <em>script</em> and <em>link</em>
tags:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>&lt;link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="converse.0.3.min.css"&gt;
&lt;script src="converse.0.3.min.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</pre>
</div>
<p>The <em>index.html</em> file inside the Converse.js folder serves as a nice usable
example of this.</p>
<p>These minified files provide the same demo-like functionality as is available
on the <a class="reference external" href="http://conversejs.org">conversejs.org</a> website. Useful for testing or demoing, but not very
practical.</p>
<p>You&#8217;ll most likely want to implement some kind of single-signon solution for
your website, where users authenticate once in your website and then stay
logged into their XMPP session upon page reload.</p>
<p>For more info on this, read <a class="reference internal" href="#session-support-i-e-single-site-login">Session support (i.e. single site login)</a>.</p>
<p>You might also want to have more fine-grained control of what gets included in
the minified Javascript file. Read <a class="reference internal" href="#configuration">Configuration</a> and <a class="reference internal" href="#minification">Minification</a> for more info on how to do
that.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="configuration">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9">Configuration</a><a class="headerlink" href="#configuration" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h1>
<p>The included minified JS and CSS files can be used for demoing or testing, but
you&#8217;ll want to configure <em>Converse.js</em> to suit your needs before you deploy it
on your website.</p>
<p><em>Converse.js</em> is passed its configuration settings when you call its
<em>initialize</em> method.</p>
<p>Please refer to the <a class="reference internal" href="#configuration-variables">Configuration variables</a> section below for info on
all the available configuration settings.</p>
<p>After you have configured <em>Converse.js</em>, you&#8217;ll have to regenerate the minified
JS file so that it will include the new settings. Please refer to the
<a class="reference internal" href="#minification">Minification</a> section for more info on how to do this.</p>
<div class="section" id="configuration-variables">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10">Configuration variables</a><a class="headerlink" href="#configuration-variables" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h2>
<div class="section" id="animate">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11">animate</a><a class="headerlink" href="#animate" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Default = True</p>
<p>Show animations, for example when opening and closing chat boxes.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="auto-list-rooms">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12">auto_list_rooms</a><a class="headerlink" href="#auto-list-rooms" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Default = False</p>
<p>If true, and the XMPP server on which the current user is logged in supports
multi-user chat, then a list of rooms on that server will be fetched.</p>
<p>Not recommended for servers with lots of chat rooms.</p>
<p>For each room on the server a query is made to fetch further details (e.g.
features, number of occupants etc.), so on servers with many rooms this
option will create lots of extra connection traffic.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="auto-subscribe">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id13">auto_subscribe</a><a class="headerlink" href="#auto-subscribe" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Default = False</p>
<p>If true, the user will automatically subscribe back to any contact requests.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="bosh-service-url">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id14">bosh_service_url</a><a class="headerlink" href="#bosh-service-url" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Connections to an XMPP server depend on a BOSH connection manager which acts as
a middle man between HTTP and XMPP.</p>
<p>See <a class="reference external" href="http://metajack.im/2008/09/08/which-bosh-server-do-you-need/l">here</a> for more information.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="fullname">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id15">fullname</a><a class="headerlink" href="#fullname" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>If you are using prebinding, you need to specify the fullname of the currently
logged in user.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="hide-muc-server">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id16">hide_muc_server</a><a class="headerlink" href="#hide-muc-server" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Default = False</p>
<p>Hide the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">server</span></tt> input field of the form inside the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Room</span></tt> panel of the
controlbox. Useful if you want to restrict users to a specific XMPP server of
your choosing.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="prebind">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id17">prebind</a><a class="headerlink" href="#prebind" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Default = False</p>
<p>Use this option when you want to attach to an existing XMPP connection that was
already authenticated (usually on the backend before page load).</p>
<p>This is useful when you don&#8217;t want to render the login form on the chat control
box with each page load.</p>
<p>When set to true, you&#8217;ll need to make sure that the onConnected method is
called, and passed to it a Strophe connection object.</p>
<p>Besides requiring the back-end to authenticate you, you&#8217;ll also
have to write a Javascript snippet to attach to the set up connection:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>$.JSON({
'url': 'mysite.com/xmpp-authenticate',
'success': function (data) {
connection = new Strophe.Connection(bosh_service_url);
connection.attach(data.jid, data.sid, data.rid, converse.onConnected);
}</pre>
</div>
<p>The backend must authenticate for you, and then return a SID (session ID) and
RID (Request ID), which you use when you attach to the connection.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="xhr-user-search">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id18">xhr_user_search</a><a class="headerlink" href="#xhr-user-search" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h3>
<p>Default = False</p>
<p>There are two ways to add users.</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>The user inputs a valid JID (Jabber ID), and the user is added as a pending contact.</li>
<li>The user inputs some text (for example part of a firstname or lastname), an XHR will be made to a backend, and a list of matches are returned. The user can then choose one of the matches to add as a contact.</li>
</ul>
<p>This setting enables the second mechanism, otherwise by default the first will
be used.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="minification">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id19">Minification</a><a class="headerlink" href="#minification" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h1>
<div class="section" id="minifying-javascript">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id20">Minifying Javascript</a><a class="headerlink" href="#minifying-javascript" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h2>
<p>We use <a class="reference external" href="http://requirejs.org">require.js</a> to keep track of <em>Converse.js</em> and its dependencies and to
to bundle them together in a single minified file fit for deployment to a
production site.</p>
<p>To use the require.js&#8217;s optimization tool, you&#8217;ll need Node and it&#8217;s package
manager, NPM.</p>
<p>You can then install install require.js for Node like so:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>npm install requirejs</pre>
</div>
<p>The minified javascript file is then created like this:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>r.js -o build.js</pre>
</div>
<p>You should now have a new minified file (the name which is specified in build.js).</p>
<p>You can <a class="reference external" href="http://requirejs.org/docs/optimization.html">read more about require.js&#8217;s optimizer here</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="minifying-css">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id21">Minifying CSS</a><a class="headerlink" href="#minifying-css" title="Permalink to this headline"></a></h2>
<p>CSS can be minimized with Yahoo&#8217;s yuicompressor tool:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>yui-compressor --type=css converse.css -o converse.min.css</pre>
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