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By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 5, 2008.
This document defines the core features of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), a technology for streaming Extensible Markup Language (XML) elements in order to exchange structured information in close to real time between any two or more network-aware entities. XMPP provides a generalized, extensible framework for incrementally exchanging XML data, upon which a variety of applications can be built. The framework includes methods for stream setup and teardown, channel encryption, authentication of a client to a server and of one server to another server, and primitives for push-style messages, publication of network availability information ("presence"), and request-response interactions between any two XMPP entities. This document also specifies the format for XMPP addresses, which are fully internationalizable.
This document obsoletes RFC 3920.
1.
Introduction
1.1.
Overview
1.2.
Functional Summary
1.3.
Conventions
1.4.
Discussion Venue
2.
Architecture
2.1.
Overview
2.2.
Server
2.3.
Client
2.4.
Network
3.
Addresses
3.1.
Overview
3.2.
Domain Identifier
3.3.
Node Identifier
3.4.
Resource Identifier
3.5.
Determination of Addresses
4.
TCP Binding
4.1.
Scope
4.2.
Hostname Resolution
4.3.
Client-to-Server Communications
4.4.
Server-to-Server Communications
4.5.
Reconnection
4.6.
Other Bindings
5.
XML Streams
5.1.
Overview
5.2.
Stream Security
5.3.
Stream Attributes
5.3.1.
from
5.3.2.
to
5.3.3.
id
5.3.4.
xml:lang
5.3.5.
version
5.3.6.
Summary
5.4.
Namespace Declarations
5.5.
Stream Features
5.6.
Closing Streams
5.6.1.
With Stream Error
5.6.2.
Without Stream Error
5.6.3.
Handling of Idle Streams
5.7.
Stream Errors
5.7.1.
Rules
5.7.1.1.
Stream Errors Are Unrecoverable
5.7.1.2.
Stream Errors Can Occur During Setup
5.7.1.3.
Stream Errors When the Host is Unspecified
5.7.2.
Syntax
5.7.3.
Defined Stream Error Conditions
5.7.3.1.
bad-format
5.7.3.2.
bad-namespace-prefix
5.7.3.3.
conflict
5.7.3.4.
connection-timeout
5.7.3.5.
host-gone
5.7.3.6.
host-unknown
5.7.3.7.
improper-addressing
5.7.3.8.
internal-server-error
5.7.3.9.
invalid-from
5.7.3.10.
invalid-id
5.7.3.11.
invalid-namespace
5.7.3.12.
invalid-xml
5.7.3.13.
not-authorized
5.7.3.14.
policy-violation
5.7.3.15.
remote-connection-failed
5.7.3.16.
resource-constraint
5.7.3.17.
restricted-xml
5.7.3.18.
see-other-host
5.7.3.19.
system-shutdown
5.7.3.20.
undefined-condition
5.7.3.21.
unsupported-encoding
5.7.3.22.
unsupported-stanza-type
5.7.3.23.
unsupported-version
5.7.3.24.
xml-not-well-formed
5.7.4.
Application-Specific Conditions
5.8.
Simplified Stream Examples
6.
STARTTLS Negotiation
6.1.
Overview
6.2.
Rules
6.2.1.
Mechanism Preferences
6.2.2.
Data Formatting
6.2.3.
Order of Negotiation
6.3.
Process
6.3.1.
Exchange of Stream Headers and Stream Features
6.3.2.
Initiation of STARTTLS Negotiation
6.3.2.1.
STARTTLS Command
6.3.2.2.
Failure Case
6.3.2.3.
Proceed Case
6.3.3.
TLS Negotiation
6.3.3.1.
Rules
6.3.3.2.
TLS Failure
6.3.3.3.
TLS Success
7.
SASL Negotiation
7.1.
Overview
7.2.
Rules
7.2.1.
Data Formatting
7.2.2.
Security Layers
7.2.3.
Simple Usernames
7.2.4.
Authorization Identities
7.2.5.
Round Trips
7.3.
Process
7.3.1.
Exchange of Stream Headers and Stream Features
7.3.2.
Initiation
7.3.3.
Challenge-Response Sequence
7.3.4.
Abort
7.3.5.
Failure
7.3.6.
Success
7.4.
SASL Definition
7.5.
SASL Errors
7.5.1.
aborted
7.5.2.
account-disabled
7.5.3.
credentials-expired
7.5.4.
encryption-required
7.5.5.
incorrect-encoding
7.5.6.
invalid-authzid
7.5.7.
invalid-mechanism
7.5.8.
malformed-request
7.5.9.
mechanism-too-weak
7.5.10.
not-authorized
7.5.11.
temporary-auth-failure
7.5.12.
transition-needed
8.
Resource Binding
8.1.
Overview
8.2.
Advertising Support
8.3.
Generation of Resource Identifiers
8.4.
Server-Generated Resource Identifier
8.4.1.
Success Case
8.4.2.
Error Case
8.5.
Client-Generated Resource Identifier
8.5.1.
Success Case
8.5.2.
Error Cases
8.5.2.1.
Not Allowed
8.5.2.2.
Bad Request
8.5.2.3.
Conflict
8.6.
Binding Multiple Resources
8.6.1.
Support
8.6.2.
Binding an Additional Resource
8.6.3.
Unbinding a Resource
8.6.3.1.
Success Case
8.6.3.2.
Error Cases
8.6.4.
From Addresses
9.
XML Stanzas
9.1.
Common Attributes
9.1.1.
to
9.1.1.1.
Client-to-Server Streams
9.1.1.2.
Server-to-Server Streams
9.1.2.
from
9.1.2.1.
Client-to-Server Streams
9.1.2.2.
Server-to-Server Streams
9.1.3.
id
9.1.4.
type
9.1.5.
xml:lang
9.2.
Basic Semantics
9.2.1.
Message Semantics
9.2.2.
Presence Semantics
9.2.3.
IQ Semantics
9.3.
Stanza Errors
9.3.1.
Rules
9.3.2.
Syntax
9.3.3.
Defined Conditions
9.3.3.1.
bad-request
9.3.3.2.
conflict
9.3.3.3.
feature-not-implemented
9.3.3.4.
forbidden
9.3.3.5.
gone
9.3.3.6.
internal-server-error
9.3.3.7.
item-not-found
9.3.3.8.
jid-malformed
9.3.3.9.
not-acceptable
9.3.3.10.
not-allowed
9.3.3.11.
not-authorized
9.3.3.12.
not-modified
9.3.3.13.
payment-required
9.3.3.14.
recipient-unavailable
9.3.3.15.
redirect
9.3.3.16.
registration-required
9.3.3.17.
remote-server-not-found
9.3.3.18.
remote-server-timeout
9.3.3.19.
resource-constraint
9.3.3.20.
service-unavailable
9.3.3.21.
subscription-required
9.3.3.22.
undefined-condition
9.3.3.23.
unexpected-request
9.3.3.24.
unknown-sender
9.3.4.
Application-Specific Conditions
9.4.
Extended Content
10.
Examples
10.1.
Client-to-Server
10.1.1.
TLS
10.1.2.
SASL
10.1.3.
Resource Binding
10.1.4.
Stanza Exchange
10.1.5.
Close
10.2.
Server-to-Server Examples
10.2.1.
TLS
10.2.2.
SASL
10.2.3.
Stanza Exchange
10.2.4.
Close
11.
Server Rules for Processing XML Stanzas
11.1.
No 'to' Address
11.1.1.
Overview
11.1.2.
Message
11.1.3.
Presence
11.1.4.
IQ
11.2.
Local Domain
11.2.1.
Mere Domain
11.2.2.
Resource at Domain
11.2.3.
Node at Domain
11.3.
Foreign Domain
11.3.1.
Existing Stream
11.3.2.
No Existing Stream
11.3.3.
Error Handling
12.
XML Usage
12.1.
Restrictions
12.2.
XML Namespace Names and Prefixes
12.2.1.
Streams Namespace
12.2.2.
Default Namespace
12.2.3.
Extended Namespaces
12.3.
Well-Formedness
12.4.
Validation
12.5.
Inclusion of Text Declaration
12.6.
Character Encoding
12.7.
White Space
13.
Compliance Requirements
13.1.
Servers
13.2.
Clients
14.
Internationalization Considerations
15.
Security Considerations
15.1.
High Security
15.2.
Certificates
15.2.1.
Certificate Generation
15.2.1.1.
Server Certificates
15.2.1.2.
Client Certificates
15.2.1.3.
ASN.1 Object Identifier
15.2.2.
Certificate Validation
15.2.2.1.
Server Certificates
15.2.2.2.
Client Certificates
15.3.
Client-to-Server Communication
15.4.
Server-to-Server Communication
15.5.
Order of Layers
15.6.
Lack of SASL Channel Binding to TLS
15.7.
Mandatory-to-Implement Technologies
15.8.
Firewalls
15.9.
Use of base64 in SASL
15.10.
Stringprep Profiles
15.11.
Address Spoofing
15.11.1.
Address Forging
15.11.2.
Address Mimicking
15.12.
Denial of Service
15.13.
Presence Leaks
15.14.
Directory Harvesting
16.
IANA Considerations
16.1.
XML Namespace Name for TLS Data
16.2.
XML Namespace Name for SASL Data
16.3.
XML Namespace Name for Stream Errors
16.4.
XML Namespace Name for Resource Binding
16.5.
XML Namespace Name for Stanza Errors
16.6.
Nodeprep Profile of Stringprep
16.7.
Resourceprep Profile of Stringprep
16.8.
GSSAPI Service Name
16.9.
Port Numbers
17.
References
17.1.
Normative References
17.2.
Informative References
Appendix A.
Nodeprep
A.1.
Introduction
A.2.
Character Repertoire
A.3.
Mapping
A.4.
Normalization
A.5.
Prohibited Output
A.6.
Bidirectional Characters
Appendix B.
Resourceprep
B.1.
Introduction
B.2.
Character Repertoire
B.3.
Mapping
B.4.
Normalization
B.5.
Prohibited Output
B.6.
Bidirectional Characters
Appendix C.
XML Schemas
C.1.
Streams namespace
C.2.
Stream error namespace
C.3.
STARTTLS namespace
C.4.
SASL namespace
C.5.
Resource binding namespace
C.6.
Stanza error namespace
Appendix D.
Contact Addresses
Appendix E.
Account Provisioning
Appendix F.
Differences From RFC 3920
Appendix G.
Copying Conditions
§
Index
§
Author's Address
§
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements
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The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an application profile of the Extensible Markup Language [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.) for streaming XML data in close to real time between any two (or more) network-aware entities. XMPP is typically used to exchange messages, share presence information, and engage in structured request-response interactions. The basic syntax and semantics of XMPP were developed originally within the Jabber open-source community, mainly in 1999. In late 2002, the XMPP Working Group was chartered with developing an adaptation of the core Jabber protocol that would be suitable as an IETF instant messaging (IM) and presence technology. As a result of work by the XMPP WG, [RFC3920] (Saint-Andre, P., Ed., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core,” October 2004.) and [RFC3921] (Saint-Andre, P., Ed., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” October 2004.) were published in October 2004, representing the most complete definition of XMPP at that time.
As a result of extensive implementation and deployment experience with XMPP since 2004, as well as more formal interoperability testing carried out under the auspices of the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF), this document reflects consensus from the XMPP developer community regarding XMPP's core XML streaming technology. In particular, this document incorporates the following backward-compatible changes from RFC 3920:
Therefore, this document defines the core features of XMPP 1.0 and obsoletes RFC 3920.
Note: The XMPP extensions required to provide the basic instant messaging and presence functionality defined in [IMP‑REQS] (Day, M., Aggarwal, S., and J. Vincent, “Instant Messaging / Presence Protocol Requirements,” February 2000.) are specified in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.).
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This non-normative section provides a developer-friendly, functional summary of XMPP; refer to the sections that follow for a normative definition of XMPP.
The purpose of XMPP is to enable the exchange of relatively small pieces of structured data (called "XML stanzas") over a network between any two (or more) entities. XMPP is implemented using a client-server architecture, wherein a client must connect to a server in order to gain access to the network and thus be allowed to exchange XML stanzas with other entities. The process whereby a client connects to a server, exchanges XML stanzas, and ends the connection is:
In the sections following discussion of XMPP architecture and XMPP addresses, this document specifies how clients connect to servers and specifies the basic semantics of XML stanzas. However, this document does not define the "payloads" of the XML stanzas that might be exchanged once a connection is successfully established; instead, definition of such semantics is provided by XMPP extensionsl. For example, [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.) defines extensions for basic instant messaging and presence functionality. In addition, various specifications produced in the XSF's XEP series [XEP‑0001] (Saint-Andre, P., “XMPP Extension Protocols,” December 2006.) define extensions for a wide range of more advanced functionality.
Within the client-server architecture used by XMPP, one server may optionally connect to another server to enable inter-domain or inter-server communication. For this to happen, the two servers must negotiate a connection between themselves and then exchange XML stanzas; the process for doing so is:
Note: Depending on local service policies, a service may wish to use the older server dialback protocol to provide weak identity verification in cases where SASL negotiation would not result in strong authentication (e.g., because the certificate presented by the peer service during TLS negotiation is self-signed and thus provides only weak identity); for details, see [XEP‑0220] (Saint-Andre, P. and J. Miller, “Server Dialback,” July 2007.).
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The following keywords are to be interpreted as described in [TERMS] (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.): "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".
In examples, lines have been wrapped for improved readability, "[...]" means elision, and the following prepended strings are used:
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The editor welcomes discussion and comments related to the topics presented in this document. The preferred forum is the <standards@xmpp.org> mailing list, for which archives and subscription information are available at <http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/standards>.
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XMPP assumes a client-server architecture, wherein a client utilizing XMPP accesses a server (normally over a [TCP] (Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” September 1981.) connection) and servers can also communicate with each other over TCP connections.
A simplified architectural diagram for a typical deployment is shown here, where the entities have the following significance:
example.net ---------------- im.example.com
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romeo@example.net juliet@im.example.com
Note: Architectures that employ the syntax of XML stanzas (XML Stanzas) but that establish peer-to-peer connections directly between clients using technologies based on [LINKLOCAL] (Cheshire, S., Aboba, B., and E. Guttman, “Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses,” May 2005.) have been deployed, but such architectures are not XMPP and are best described as "XMPP-like"; for details, see [XEP‑0174] (Saint-Andre, P., “Link-Local Messaging,” June 2007.).
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A SERVER is an entity whose primary responsibilities are to:
Depending on the application, the secondary responsibilities of an XMPP server may include:
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A CLIENT is an entity that establiishes an XML stream with a server by authenticating using the credentials of a local account and that then completes resource binding (Resource Binding) in order to enable delivery of XML stanzas via the server to the client. A client then uses XMPP to communicate with its server, other clients, and any other accessible entities on a network. Multiple clients may connect simultaneously to a server on behalf of a local account, where each client is differentiated by the resource identifier portion of an XMPP address (e.g., <node@domain/home> vs. <node@domain/work>), as defined under Section 3 (Addresses) and Section 8 (Resource Binding). The RECOMMENDED port for TCP connections between a client and a server is 5222, as registered with the IANA (see Section 16.9 (Port Numbers)).
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Because each server is identified by a network address and because server-to-server communication is a straightforward extension of the client-to-server protocol, in practice the system consists of a network of servers that inter-communicate. Thus, for example, <juliet@im.example.com> is able to exchange messages, presence, and other information with <romeo@example.net>. This pattern is familiar from messaging protocols (such as [SMTP] (Klensin, J., “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol,” April 2001.)) that make use of network addressing standards. Communication between any two servers is OPTIONAL. If enabled, such communication SHOULD occur over XML streams that are bound to [TCP] (Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” September 1981.) connections. The RECOMMENDED port for TCP connections between servers is 5269, as registered with the IANA (see Section 16.9 (Port Numbers)).
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An ENTITY is anything that is network-addressable and that can communicate using XMPP. For historical reasons, the native address of an XMPP entity is called a JABBER IDENTIFIER or JID. A valid JID contains a set of ordered elements formed of an XMPP domain identifier, node identifier, and resource identifier.
The syntax for a JID is defined as follows using the Augmented Backus-Naur Form as specified in [ABNF] (Crocker, D. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF,” October 2005.).
jid = [ node "@" ] domain [ "/" resource ]
node = 1*(nodepoint)
; a "nodepoint" is a UTF-8 encoded Unicode code
; point that satisfies the Nodeprep profile of
; stringprep
domain = fqdn / address-literal / idnlabel
fqdn = (idnlabel 1*("." idnlabel))
; an "idnlabel" is an internationalized label
; as described in RFC 3490
address-literal = IPv4address / IPv6address
; the "IPv4address" and "IPv6address" rules are
; defined in Appendix B of RFC 2373
resource = 1*(resourcepoint)
; a "resourcepoint" is a UTF-8 encoded Unicode
; code point that satisfies the Resourceprep
; profile of stringprep
Note: The "IPv4address" and "IPv6address" rules are indeed provided in [RFC2373] (Hinden, R. and S. Deering, “IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture,” July 1998.) and were removed from [IPv6] (Hinden, R. and S. Deering, “IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture,” February 2006.), which supersedes RFC 2373.
All JIDs are based on the foregoing structure. One common use of this structure is to identify a messaging and presence account, the server that hosts the account, and a connected resource (e.g., a specific device) in the form of <node@domain/resource>. However, node types other than clients are possible; for example, a specific chat room offered by a multi-user conference service (see [XEP‑0045] (Saint-Andre, P., “Multi-User Chat,” April 2007.)) could be addressed as <room@service> (where "room" is the name of the chat room and "service" is the hostname of the multi-user conference service) and a specific occupant of such a room could be addressed as <room@service/nick> (where "nick" is the occupant's room nickname). Many other JID types are possible (e.g., <domain/resource> could be a server-side script or service).
Each allowable portion of a JID (node identifier, domain identifier, and resource identifier) MUST NOT be more than 1023 bytes in length, resulting in a maximum total size (including the '@' and '/' separators) of 3071 bytes.
Note: While the format of a JID is consistent with [URI] (Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax,” January 2005.), an entity's address on an XMPP network MUST be a JID (without a URI scheme) and not a [URI] (Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax,” January 2005.) or [IRI] (Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs),” January 2005.) as specified in [XMPP‑URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” February 2008.); the latter specification is provided only for use by non-XMPP applications.
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The DOMAIN IDENTIFIER portion of a JID is that portion after the '@' character (if any) and before the '/' character (if any); it is the primary identifier and is the only REQUIRED element of a JID (a mere domain identifier is a valid JID). Typically a domain identifier identifies the "home" server to which clients connect for XML routing and data management functionality. (Note: A single server may service multiple domain identifiers, i.e., multiple local domains.) However, it is not necessary for an XMPP domain identifier to identify an entity that provides core XMPP server functionality (e.g., a domain identifier may identity an entity such as a multi-user conference service, a publish-subscribe service, or a user directory).
The domain identifier for every server or service that will communicate over a network SHOULD be a fully qualified domain name (see [DNS] (Mockapetris, P., “Domain names - implementation and specification,” November 1987.)); while the domain identifier MAY be either an Internet Protocol (IPv4 or IPv6) address or a text label (commonly called an "unqualified hostname") that is resolvable on a local network, domain identifiers that are IP addresses may not be acceptable to other services for the sake of interdomain communication and domain identifiers that are text labels MUST NOT be used on public networks. If the domain identifier includes a final character considered to be a label separator (dot) by [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.) or [STD13] (Mockapetris, P., “Domain names - implementation and specification,” November 1987.), this character MUST be stripped from the domain identifier before the JID of which it is a part is used for the purpose of routing an XML stanza, comparing against another JID, or constructing an [XMPP‑URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” February 2008.); in particular, the character should be stripped before any other canonicalization steps are taken (such as application of the [NAMEPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),” March 2003.) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) or completion of the ToASCII operation as described in [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.)).
A domain identifier MUST be an "internationalized domain name" as defined in [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.), that is, "a domain name in which every label is an internationalized label". When preparing a text label (consisting of a sequence of Unicode code points) for representation as an internationalized label in the process of constructing an XMPP domain identifier or comparing two XMPP domain identifiers, an application MUST ensure that for each text label it is possible to apply without failing the ToASCII operation specified in [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.) with the UseSTD3ASCIIRules flag set (thus forbidding ASCII code points other than letters, digits, and hyphens). If the ToASCII operation can be applied without failing, then the label is an internationalized label. An internationalized domain name (and therefore an XMPP domain identifier) is constructed from its constituent internationalized labels by following the rules specified in [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.). (Note: The ToASCII operation includes application of the [NAMEPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),” March 2003.) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) and encoding using the algorithm specified in [PUNYCODE] (Costello, A., “Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.); for details, see [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.).)
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The NODE IDENTIFIER portion of a JID is an optional secondary identifier placed before the domain identifier and separated from the latter by the '@' character. Typically a node identifier uniquely identifies the entity requesting and using network access provided by a server (i.e., a local account), although it can also represent other kinds of entities (e.g., a chat room associated with a multi-user conference service). The entity represented by an XMPP node identifier is addressed within the context of a specific domain. When the domain is an XMPP server and the entity is a local account on the server, the resulting address (of the form <node@domain>) is called a BARE JID.
A node identifier MUST be formatted such that the Nodeprep profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) can be applied without failing (see Appendix A (Nodeprep)). Before comparing two node identifiers, an application MUST first apply the Nodeprep profile to each identifier.
Note: Because the additional characters prohibited by Nodeprep (see Appendix A (Nodeprep)) are prohibited after normalization, an implementation should not enable a human user to input any Unicode code point whose decomposition includes those characters; such code points include but are not necessarily limited to the following (refer to [UNICODE] (The Unicode Consortium, “The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0,” 2000.) for further information).
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The RESOURCE IDENTIFIER portion of a JID is an optional tertiary identifier placed after the domain identifier and separated from the latter by the '/' character. A resource identifier may modify either a <node@domain> address or a mere <domain> address. Typically a resource identifier uniquely identifies a specific connection (e.g., a device or location) or object (e.g., a participant in a multi-user conference room) belonging to the entity associated with an XMPP node identifier at a local domain. XMPP entities SHOULD consider resource identifiers to be opaque strings and SHOULD NOT impute meaning to any given resource identifier. A resource identifier is negotiated between a client and a server during resource binding (Resource Binding), after which the entity is referred to as a CONNECTED RESOURCE and its address (of the form <node@domain/resource>) is referred to as a FULL JID. An entity MAY maintain multiple connected resources simultaneously, with each connected resource differentiated by a distinct resource identifier.
A resource identifier MUST be formatted such that the Resourceprep profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) can be applied without failing (see Appendix B (Resourceprep)). Before comparing two resource identifiers, an application MUST first apply the Resourceprep profile to each identifier.
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After SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation) and, if appropriate, resource binding (Resource Binding), the receiving entity for a stream MUST determine the initiating entity's JID.
For server-to-server communication, the initiating entity's JID SHOULD be the authorization identity (as defined by [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.)), either (1) as directly communicated by the initiating entity during SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation) or (2) as derived from the authentication identity if no authorization identity was specified during SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation).
For client-to-server communication, the client's bare JID (<node@domain>) SHOULD be the authorization identity (as defined by [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.)), either (1) as directly communicated by the initiating entity during SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation) or (2) as derived from the authentication identity if no authorization identity was specified during SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation). The resource identifier portion of the full JID (<node@domain/resource>) SHOULD be the resource identifier negotiated by the client and server during resource binding (Resource Binding).
The receiving entity MUST ensure that the resulting JID (including node identifier, domain identifier, resource identifier, and separator characters) conforms to the rules and formats defined earlier in this section; to meet this restriction, the receiving entity may need to replace the JID sent by the initiating entity with the canonicalized JID as determined by the receiving entity.
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As XMPP is defined in this specification, an initiating entity (client or server) MUST open a Transmission Control Protocol [TCP] (Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” September 1981.) connection at the receiving entity (server) before it negotiates XML streams with the receiving entity. The rules specified in the following sections apply to the TCP binding.
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Before opening the TCP connection, the initiating entity first MUST resolve the Domain Name System (DNS) hostname associated with the receiving entity and determine the appropriate TCP port for communication with the receiving entity. The process is:
Note: Many XMPP servers are implemented in such a way that they can host additional services (byond those defined in this specification and [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.)) at hostnames that are subdomains of the hostname of the main XMPP service (e.g., conference.example.net for a [XEP‑0045] (Saint-Andre, P., “Multi-User Chat,” April 2007.) service associated with the example.net XMPP service) or subdomains of the first-level domain of the underlying host (e.g., muc.example.com for a [XEP‑0045] (Saint-Andre, P., “Multi-User Chat,” April 2007.) service associated with the im.example.com XMPP service). If an entity from a remote domain wishes to use such additional services, it would generate an appropriate XML stanza and the remote domain itself would attempt to resolve the service's hostname via an SRV lookup on resource records such as "_xmpp-server._tcp.conference.example.net." or "_xmpp-server._tcp.muc.example.com.". Therefore if a service wishes to enable entities from remote domains to acess these additional services it should advertise the appropriate "_xmpp-server" SRV records in addition to the "_xmpp-server" record for its main XMPP service.
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Because a client is subordinate to a server and therefore a client authenticates to the server but the server does not authenticate to the client, it is necessary to have only one TCP connection between client and server. Thus the server MUST allow the client to share a single TCP connection for XML stanzas sent from client to server and from server to client (i.e., the inital stream and response stream as specified under Section 5 (XML Streams)).
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Because two servers are peers and therefore each peer must authenticate with the other, the servers MUST use two TCP connections: one for XML stanzas sent from the first server to the second server and another (initiated by the second server) for XML stanzas from the second server to the first server.
This rule applies only to XML stanzas (XML Stanzas). Therefore during STARTTLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation) and SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation) the servers would use one TCP connection, but after stream setup that TCP connection would be used only for the initiating server to send XML stanzas to the receiving server. In order for the receiving server to send XML stanzas to the initiating server, the receiving server would need to reverse the roles and negotiate an XML stream from the receiving server to the initiating server.
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It can happen that an XMPP server goes offline while servicing TCP connections from local clients and from other servers. Because the number of such connections can be quite large, the reconnection algorithm employed by entities that seek to reconnect can have a significant impact on software and network performance. The following guidelines are RECOMMENDED:
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There is no necessary coupling of an XML stream to a TCP connection. For example, two entities could connect to each other via another transport, such as [HTTP] (Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1,” June 1999.) as specified in [XEP‑0124] (Paterson, I., Smith, D., and P. Saint-Andre, “Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP (BOSH),” February 2007.) and [XEP‑0206] (Paterson, I., “XMPP Over BOSH,” June 2007.). However, this specification defines a binding of XMPP to TCP only.
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Two fundamental concepts make possible the rapid, asynchronous exchange of relatively small payloads of structured information between presence-aware entities: XML streams and XML stanzas. These terms are defined as follows.
- Definition of XML Stream:
- An XML STREAM is a container for the exchange of XML elements between any two entities over a network. The start of an XML stream is denoted unambiguously by an opening STREAM HEADER (i.e., an XML <stream> tag with appropriate attributes and namespace declarations), while the end of the XML stream is denoted unambiguously by a closing XML </stream> tag. During the life of the stream, the entity that initiated it can send an unbounded number of XML elements over the stream, either elements used to negotiate the stream (e.g., to complete TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation) or SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation)) or XML stanzas. The INITIAL STREAM is negotiated from the initiating entity (typically a client or server) to the receiving entity (typically a server), and can be seen as corresponding to the initiating entity's "connection" or "session" with the receiving entity. The initial stream enables unidirectional communication from the initiating entity to the receiving entity; in order to enable information exchange from the receiving entity to the initiating entity, the receiving entity MUST negotiate a stream in the opposite direction (the RESPONSE STREAM).
- Definition of XML Stanza:
- An XML STANZA is a discrete semantic unit of structured information that is sent from one entity to another over an XML stream. An XML stanza is the basic unit of meaning in XMPP. An XML stanza exists at the direct child level of the root <stream/> element and is said to be well-balanced if it matches the production [43] content of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.). The start of any XML stanza is denoted unambiguously by the element start tag at depth=1 of the XML stream (e.g., <presence>), and the end of any XML stanza is denoted unambiguously by the corresponding close tag at depth=1 (e.g., </presence>); a server MUST NOT process a partial stanza and MUST NOT attach meaning to the transmission timing of any part of a stanza (before receipt of the close tag). The only XML stanzas defined herein are the <message/>, <presence/>, and <iq/> elements qualified by the default namespace for the stream, as described under Section 9 (XML Stanzas); an XML element sent for the purpose of TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation) or SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation) is not considered to be an XML stanza. An XML stanza MAY contain child elements (with accompanying attributes, elements, and XML character data) as necessary in order to convey the desired information, which MAY be qualified by any XML namespace (see [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.) as well as Section 9.4 (Extended Content) herein).
Consider the example of a client's connection to a server. In order to connect to a server, a client MUST initiate an XML stream by sending a stream header to the server, optionally preceded by a text declaration specifying the XML version and the character encoding supported (see Section 12.5 (Inclusion of Text Declaration) and Section 12.6 (Character Encoding)). Subject to local policies and service provisioning, the server SHOULD then reply with a second XML stream back to the client, again optionally preceded by a text declaration. Once the client has completed SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation) and resource binding (Resource Binding), the client MAY send an unbounded number of XML stanzas over the stream. When the client desires to close the stream, it simply sends a closing </stream> tag to the server (see Section 5.6 (Closing Streams)).
In essence, then, an XML stream acts as an envelope for all the XML stanzas sent during a connection. We can represent this in a simplistic fashion as follows.
+--------------------+ | <stream> | |--------------------| | <presence> | | <show/> | | </presence> | |--------------------| | <message to='foo'> | | <body/> | | </message> | |--------------------| | <iq to='bar'> | | <query/> | | </iq> | |--------------------| | <iq from='bar'> | | <query/> | | </iq> | |--------------------| | [ ... ] | |--------------------| | </stream> | +--------------------+
Note: Those who are accustomed to thinking of XML in a document-centric manner may wish to view a client's connection to a server as consisting of two open-ended XML documents: one from the client to the server and one from the server to the client. From this perspective, the root <stream/> element can be considered the document entity for each "document", and the two "documents" are built up through the accumulation of XML stanzas sent over the two XML streams. However, this perspective is a convenience only; XMPP does not deal in documents but in XML streams and XML stanzas.
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For the purpose of stream security, both Transport Layer Security (see Section 6 (STARTTLS Negotiation)) and the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (see Section 7 (SASL Negotiation)) are mandatory to implement.
When negotiating XML streams in XMPP 1.0, TLS SHOULD be used as defined under Section 6 (STARTTLS Negotiation) and SASL MUST be used as defined under Section 7 (SASL Negotiation). The initial stream and the response stream MUST be secured separately, although security in both directions MAY be established via mechanisms that provide mutual authentication.
The initiating entity SHOULD NOT attempt to send XML stanzas (XML Stanzas) over the stream before the stream has been authenticated. However, if it does attempt to do so, the receiving entity MUST NOT accept such stanzas and MUST return a <not-authorized/> stream error and then terminate both the XML stream and the underlying TCP connection. Note: This applies to XML stanzas only (i.e., <message/>, <presence/>, and <iq/> elements qualified by the default namespace) and not to XML elements used for stream negotiation (e.g., elements used to complete TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation) or SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation)).
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The attributes of the root <stream/> element are as follows.
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In client-to-server communication, the 'from' attribute SHOULD be included in the initial stream header and (if included) MUST be set to the account name (i.e., bare JID = <node@domain>) of the entity controlling the client.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
In server-to-server communication, the 'from' attribute SHOULD be included in the initial stream header and (if included) MUST be set to a hostname serviced by the initiating entity.
P: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='example.net'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
In both client-to-server and server-to-server communications, the 'from' attribute MUST be included in the response stream header and MUST be set to a hostname serviced by the receiving entity that is granting access to the initiating entity.
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Note: Each entity MUST verify the identity of the other entity before exchanging XML stanzas with it (see Section 15.3 (Client-to-Server Communication) and Section 15.4 (Server-to-Server Communication)).
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In both client-to-server and server-to-server communications, the 'to' attribute SHOULD be included in the initial stream header and (if included) MUST be set to a hostname serviced by the receiving entity.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
In client-to-server communication, if the client included a 'from' address in the initial stream header then the server SHOULD include a 'to' attribute in the response stream header and (if included) MUST set the 'to' attribute to the bare JID specified in the 'from' attribute of the initial stream header.
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
In server-to-server communication, if the initiating entity included a 'from' address in the initial stream header then the receiving entity SHOULD include a 'to' attribute in the response stream header and (if included) MUST set the 'to' attribute to the hostname specified in the 'from' attribute of the initial stream header.
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='g4qSvGvBxJ+xeAd7QKezOQJFFlw='
to='example.net'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Note: Each entity MUST verify the identity of the other entity before exchanging XML stanzas with it (see Section 15.3 (Client-to-Server Communication) and Section 15.4 (Server-to-Server Communication)).
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There SHOULD NOT be an 'id' attribute in the initial stream header; however, if an 'id' attribute is included, it SHOULD be silently ignored by the receiving entity.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
The 'id' attribute MUST be included in the response XML stream header. This attribute is a unique identifier created by the receiving entity to function as a identifier for the initiating entity's two streams with the receiving entity, and MUST be unique within the receiving application (normally a server).
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Note: The stream ID may be security-critical and therefore MUST be both unpredictable and nonrepeating (see [RANDOM] (Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, “Randomness Requirements for Security,” June 2005.) for recommendations regarding randomness for security purposes).
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An 'xml:lang' attribute (as defined in Section 2.12 of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.)) SHOULD be included in the initial stream header to specify the default language of any human-readable XML character data it sends over that stream.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
If the attribute is included, the receiving entity SHOULD remember that value as the default for both the initial stream and the response stream; if the attribute is not included, the receiving entity SHOULD use a configurable default value for both streams, which it MUST communicate in the response stream header.
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
For all stanzas sent over the initial stream, if the initiating entity does not include an 'xml:lang' attribute, the receiving entity SHOULD apply the default value; if the initiating entity does include an 'xml:lang' attribute, the receiving entity MUST NOT modify or delete it (see also Section 9.1.5 (xml:lang)). The value of the 'xml:lang' attribute MUST conform to the NMTOKEN datatype (as defined in Section 2.3 of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.)) and MUST conform to the format defined in [LANGTAGS] (Phillips, A. and M. Davis, “Tags for Identifying Languages,” September 2006.).
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The presence of the version attribute set to a value of at least "1.0" signals support for the stream-related protocols (including stream features) defined in this specification.
The version of XMPP specified herein is "1.0"; in particular, XMPP 1.0 encapsulates the stream-related protocols (TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation), SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation), and stream errors (Stream Errors)), as well as the basic semantics of the three defined XML stanza types (<message/>, <presence/>, and <iq/>).
The numbering scheme for XMPP versions is "<major>.<minor>". The major and minor numbers MUST be treated as separate integers and each number MAY be incremented higher than a single digit. Thus, "XMPP 2.4" would be a lower version than "XMPP 2.13", which in turn would be lower than "XMPP 12.3". Leading zeros (e.g., "XMPP 6.01") MUST be ignored by recipients and MUST NOT be sent.
The major version number should be incremented only if the stream and stanza formats or required actions have changed so dramatically that an older version entity would not be able to interoperate with a newer version entity if it simply ignored the elements and attributes it did not understand and took the actions specified in the older specification.
The minor version number should be incremented only if significant new capabilities have been added to the core protocol (e.g., a newly defined value of the 'type' attribute for message, presence, or IQ stanzas). The minor version number MUST be ignored by an entity with a smaller minor version number, but MAY be used for informational purposes by the entity with the larger minor version number (e.g., the entity with the larger minor version number would simply note that its correspondent would not be able to understand that value of the 'type' attribute and therefore would not send it).
The following rules apply to the generation and handling of the 'version' attribute within stream headers:
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We can summarize the attributes of the root <stream/> element as follows.
+----------+--------------------------+-------------------------+ | | initiating to receiving | receiving to initiating | +----------+--------------------------+-------------------------+ | to | JID of receiver | JID of initiator | | from | JID of initiator | JID of receiver | | id | silently ignored | stream identifier | | xml:lang | default language | default language | | version | XMPP 1.0+ supported | XMPP 1.0+ supported | +----------+--------------------------+-------------------------+
Note: The attributes of the root <stream/> element are not prepended by a 'stream:' prefix because, in accordance with Section 5.3 of [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.), the default namespace does not apply to attribute names.
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The stream element MUST possess both a streams namespace declaration and a default namespace declaration (as "namespace declaration" is defined in [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.)). For detailed information regarding the streams namespace and default namespace, see Section 12.2 (XML Namespace Names and Prefixes).
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If the initiating entity includes the 'version' attribute set to a value of at least "1.0" in the initial stream header, after sending the response stream header the receiving entity MUST send a <features/> child element (prefixed by the streams namespace prefix) to the initiating entity in order to announce any stream-level features that can be negotiated (or capabilities that otherwise need to be advertised).
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <stream:features>
<starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'>
<required/>
</starttls>
</stream:features>
Stream features are used mainly to advertise TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation), SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation), and resource binding (Resource Binding); however, stream features also can be used to advertise features associated with various XMPP extensions. If an entity does not understand or support a feature, it SHOULD silently ignore the associated feature.
If one or more security features (e.g., TLS and SASL) need to be successfully negotiated before a non-security-related feature (e.g., resource binding) can be offered, the non-security-related feature SHOULD NOT be included in the stream features that are advertised before the relevant security features have been negotiated.
If a feature must be negotiated before the initiating entity may proceed, that feature SHOULD include a <required/> child element and the receiving entity SHOULD NOT advertize any other stream features until the required feature has been negotiated.
The order of child elements contained in any given <stream:features/> element is not significant.
After completing negotiation of any stream feature (even stream features that do not require a stream restart), the receiving entity MUST send an updated list of stream features to the initiating entity. However, if there are no features to be advertised (e.g., in the stream reset initiated after successful SASL negotiation for a server-to-server connection, or after resource binding for a client-to-server stream) then the receiving entity MUST send an empty <stream:features/> element.
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <stream:features/>
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An XML stream between two entities can be closed because a stream error has occurred or in some cases in the absence of an error. Where possible, it is preferable to trigger a stream close only because a stream error has occurred.
| TOC |
If a stream error has occurred, the entity that detects the error MUST close the stream as described under Section 5.7.1 (Rules).
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At any time after XML streams have been negotiated between two entities, either entity MAY close its stream to the other party in the absence of a stream error by sending a closing stream tag:
P: </stream:stream>
The entity that sends the closing stream tag SHOULD wait for the other party to also close its stream:
S: </stream:stream>
However, the entity that sends the first closing stream tag MAY consider both streams to be void if the other party does not send its closing stream tag within a reasonable amount of time (where the definition of "reasonable" is left up to the implementation or deployment).
After an entity sends a closing stream tag, it MUST NOT send further data over that stream.
After the entity that sent the first closing stream tag receives a reciprocal closing stream tag from the other party (or if it considers the stream to be void after a reasonable amount of time), it MUST terminate the underlying TCP connection or connections.
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An XML stream can become idle, i.e., neither entity has sent XMPP traffic over the stream for some period of time (usually at least several minutes). A server MAY close an idle stream with a local client or remote server. The idle timeout period is a matter of implementation and local service policy; however, it is RECOMMENDED to be liberal in accepting idle streams, since experience has shown that doing so improves the reliability of communications over XMPP networks. In particular, it is typically more efficient to maintain a stream between two servers than it is to aggressively timeout such a stream, especially with regard to synchronization of presence information as described in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.), so it is RECOMMENDED to maintain such a stream since experience has shown that server-to-server streams are cyclical and typically need to be re-established every 24 to 48 hours if they are timed out.
An XML stream can appear idle at the XMPP level because the undelying TCP connection has become idle (e.g., a client's network connection has been lost). The typical method for detecting an idle TCP connection is to send a white space character over the TCP connection between XML stanzas, which is allowed for XML streams as described under Section 12.7 (White Space). The time between such "whitespace pings" is a matter of implementation and local service policy; however, it is RECOMMENDED that these pings be sent not more than once every 60 seconds.
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The root stream element MAY contain an <error/> child element that is prefixed by the streams namespace prefix. The error child shall be sent by a compliant entity if it perceives that a stream-level error has occurred.
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The following rules apply to stream-level errors.
| TOC |
Stream-level errors are unrecoverable. Therefore, if an error occurs at the level of the stream, the entity that detects the error MUST send a stream error to the other entity, send a closing </stream> tag, and immediately terminate the underlying TCP connection.
C: <message><body></message>
S: <stream:error>
<xml-not-well-formed
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
If the error occurs while the stream is being set up, the receiving entity MUST still send the opening <stream> tag, include the <error/> element as a child of the stream element, send the closing </stream> tag, and immediately terminate the underlying TCP connection.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://wrong.namespace.example.org/'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
<stream:error>
<invalid-namespace
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
If the initiating entity provides no 'to' attribute or provides an unknown host in the 'to' attribute and the error occurs during stream setup, the receiving entity SHOULD provide its authoritative hostname in the 'from' attribute of the stream header sent before termination.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://wrong.namespace.example.org/'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<invalid-namespace
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The syntax for stream errors is as follows, where "defined-condition" is a placeholder for one of the conditions defined under Section 5.7.3 (Defined Stream Error Conditions).
<stream:error>
<defined-condition xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
[<text xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'
xml:lang='langcode'>
[ ... descriptive text ... ]
</text>]
[application-specific condition element]
</stream:error>
The <error/> element:
The <text/> element is OPTIONAL. If included, it SHOULD be used only to provide descriptive or diagnostic information that supplements the meaning of a defined condition or application-specific condition. It SHOULD NOT be interpreted programmatically by an application. It SHOULD NOT be used as the error message presented to a human user, but MAY be shown in addition to the error message associated with the included condition element or elements.
| TOC |
The following stream-level error conditions are defined.
| TOC |
The entity has sent XML that cannot be processed.
(In the following example, the client sends an XMPP message that is not well-formed XML.)
C: <message>
<body>No closing body tag!
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<bad-format
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
This error MAY be used instead of the more specific XML-related errors, such as <bad-namespace-prefix/>, <invalid-xml/>, <restricted-xml/>, <unsupported-encoding/>, and <xml-not-well-formed/>. However, the more specific errors are preferred.
| TOC |
The entity has sent a namespace prefix that is unsupported, or has sent no namespace prefix on an element that requires such a prefix (see Section 12.2 (XML Namespace Names and Prefixes)).
(In the following example, the client specifies a namespace prefix of "foobar" for the XML streams namespace.)
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:foobar='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<bad-namespace-prefix
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The server is either (1) closing the existing stream for this entity because a new stream has been initiated that conflicts with the existing stream, or (2) is refusing a new stream for this entity because allowing the new stream would conflict with an existing stream (e.g., because the server allows only a certain number of connections from the same IP address).
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<conflict
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The entity has not generated any traffic over the stream for some period of time (configurable according to a local service policy) and therefore the connection is being dropped.
P: <stream:error>
<connection-timeout
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The value of the 'to' attribute provided in the initial stream header corresponds to a hostname that is no longer hosted by the receiving entity.
(In the following example, the peer specifies a 'to' address of "foo.im.example.com" when connecting to the "im.example.com" server, but the server no longer hosts a service at that address.)
P: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='example.net'
to='foo.im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='g4qSvGvBxJ+xeAd7QKezOQJFFlw='
to='example.net'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<host-gone
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The value of the 'to' attribute provided in the initial stream header does not correspond to a hostname that is hosted by the receiving entity.
(In the following example, the peer specifies a 'to' address of "example.org" when connecting to the "im.example.com" server, but the server knows nothing of that address.)
P: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='example.net'
to='example.org'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='g4qSvGvBxJ+xeAd7QKezOQJFFlw='
to='example.net'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<host-unknown
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
A stanza sent between two servers lacks a 'to' or 'from' attribute (or the attribute has no value).
(In the following example, the peer sends a stanza without a 'to' address.)
P: <message from='juliet@im.example.com'>
<body>Wherefore art thou?</body>
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<improper-addressing
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The server has experienced a misconfiguration or an otherwise-undefined internal error that prevents it from servicing the stream.
S: <stream:error>
<internal-server-error
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The JID or hostname provided in a 'from' address does not match an authorized JID or validated domain negotiated between servers via SASL, or between a client and a server via authentication and resource binding.
(In the following example, a peer that has authenticated only as "example.net" attempts to send a stanza from an address at "example.org".)
P: <message from='romeo@example.org' to='juliet@im.example.com'>
<body>Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.</body>
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<invalid-from
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The stream ID or server dialback ID is invalid or does not match an ID previously provided.
(In the following example, the server dialback ID is invalid; see [XEP‑0220] (Saint-Andre, P. and J. Miller, “Server Dialback,” July 2007.).)
P: <db:verify
from='example.net'
to='im.example.com'
id='unknown-id-here'
type='invalid'/>
S: <stream:error>
<invalid-id
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The streams namespace name is something other than "http://etherx.jabber.org/streams" (see Section 12.2 (XML Namespace Names and Prefixes)).
(In the following example, the client specifies a streams namespace of 'http://wrong.namespace.example.org/' instead of the correct namespace of "http://etherx.jabber.org/streams".)
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://wrong.namespace.example.org/'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<invalid-namespace
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The entity has sent invalid XML over the stream to a server that performs validation (see Section 12.4 (Validation)).
(In the following example, the peer attempts to send an IQ stanza of type "subscribe" but there is no such value for the 'type' attribute.)
P: <iq from='example.net'
id='some-id'
to='im.example.com'
type='subscribe'>
<ping xmlns='urn:xmpp:ping'/>
</iq>
S: <stream:error>
<invalid-xml
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The entity has attempted to send XML stanzas before the stream has been authenticated, or otherwise is not authorized to perform an action related to stream negotiation; the receiving entity MUST NOT process the offending stanza before sending the stream error.
(In the following example, the client attempts to send XML stanzas before authenticating with the server.)
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
C: <message to='romeo@example.net'>
<body>Wherefore art thou?</body>
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<not-authorized
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The entity has violated some local service policy (e.g., the stanza exceeds a configured size limit); the server MAY choose to specify the policy in the <text/> element or an application-specific condition element.
(In the following example, the client sends an XMPP message that is too large according to the server's local service policy.)
C: <message to='juliet@im.example.com' id='foo'>
<body>[ ... the-emacs-manual ... ]</body>
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<policy-violation
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
S: </stream:stream>
| TOC |
The server is unable to properly connect to a remote entity that is required for authentication or authorization.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<remote-connection-failed
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The server lacks the system resources necessary to service the stream.
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<resource-constraint
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The entity has attempted to send restricted XML features such as a comment, processing instruction, DTD, entity reference, or unescaped character (see Section 12.1 (Restrictions)).
(In the following example, the client sends an XMPP message containing an XML comment.)
C: <message to='juliet@im.example.com'>
<!--<subject/>-->
<body>This message has no subject.</body>
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<restricted-xml
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The server will not provide service to the initiating entity but is redirecting traffic to another host; the XML character data of the <see-other-host/> element returned by the server SHOULD specify the alternate hostname or IP address at which to connect, which SHOULD be a valid domain identifier but may also include a port number; if no port is specified, the initiating entity SHOULD perform a [DNS‑SRV] (Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, “A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV),” February 2000.) lookup on the provided domain identifier but MAY assume that it can connect to that domain identifier at the standard XMPP ports (i.e., 5222 for client-to-server connections and 5269 for server-to-server connections).
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
<stream:error>
<see-other-host
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'>
im.example.com:9090
</see-other-host>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The server is being shut down and all active streams are being closed.
S: <stream:error>
<system-shutdown
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The error condition is not one of those defined by the other conditions in this list; this error condition SHOULD be used only in conjunction with an application-specific condition.
S: <stream:error>
<undefined-condition
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
<app-error xmlns='some-application-ns'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The initiating entity has encoded the stream in an encoding that is not supported by the server (see Section 12.6 (Character Encoding)) or has otherwise improperly encoded the stream (e.g., by violating the rules of the UTF-8 encoding).
(In the following example, the client attempts to encode data using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8.)
C: <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-16'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
<stream:error>
<unsupported-encoding
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The initiating entity has sent a first-level child of the stream that is not supported by the server or consistent with the default namespace.
(In the following example, the client attempts to send an XML stanza of <pubsub/> when the default namespace is "jabber:client".)
C: <pubsub>
<publish node='princely_musings'>
<item id='ae890ac52d0df67ed7cfdf51b644e901'>
<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>Soliloquy</title>
<summary>
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
</summary>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html'
href='http://denmark.lit/2003/12/13/atom03'/>
<id>tag:denmark.lit,2003:entry-32397</id>
<published>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</published>
<updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated>
</entry>
</item>
</publish>
</pubsub>
S: <stream:error>
<unsupported-stanza-type
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The value of the 'version' attribute provided by the initiating entity in the stream header specifies a version of XMPP that is not supported by the server; the server MAY specify the version(s) it supports in the <text/> element.
(In the following example, the client specifies an XMPP version of "11.0" but the server supports only version "1.0" and "1.1".)
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='11.0'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
<stream:error>
<unsupported-version
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
<text xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'>
1.0, 1.1
</text>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
The initiating entity has sent XML that violates the well-formedness rules of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.) or [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.).
(In the following example, the client sends an XMPP message that is not well-formed XML.)
C: <message>
<body>No closing body tag!
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<xml-not-well-formed
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
As noted, an application MAY provide application-specific stream error information by including a properly-namespaced child in the error element. The application-specific element SHOULD supplement or further qualify a defined element. Thus the <error/> element will contain two or three child elements:
C: <message>
<body>
My keyboard layout is:
QWERTYUIOP{}|
ASDFGHJKL:"
ZXCVBNM<>?
</body>
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<xml-not-well-formed
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
<text xml:lang='en' xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'>
Some special application diagnostic information!
</text>
<escape-your-data xmlns='application-ns'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
| TOC |
This section contains two simplified examples of a stream-based connection of a client on a server; these examples are included for the purpose of illustrating the concepts introduced thus far.
A basic connection:
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
[ ... channel encryption ... ]
[ ... authentication ... ]
[ ... resource binding ... ]
C: <message from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='romeo@example.net'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?</body>
</message>
S: <message from='romeo@example.net/orchard'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.</body>
</message>
C: </stream:stream>
S: </stream:stream>
A connection gone bad:
C: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='++TR84Sm6A3hnt3Q065SnAbbk3Y='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
[ ... channel encryption ... ]
[ ... authentication ... ]
[ ... resource binding ... ]
C: <message from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='romeo@example.net'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>No closing body tag!
</message>
S: <stream:error>
<xml-not-well-formed
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
</stream:error>
</stream:stream>
More detailed examples are provided under Section 10 (Examples).
| TOC |
| TOC |
XMPP includes a method for securing the stream from tampering and eavesdropping. This channel encryption method makes use of the Transport Layer Security [TLS] (Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” April 2006.) protocol, specifically a "STARTTLS" extension that is modelled after similar extensions for the [IMAP] (Crispin, M., “INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION 4rev1,” March 2003.), [POP3] (Myers, J. and M. Rose, “Post Office Protocol - Version 3,” May 1996.), and [ACAP] (Newman, C. and J. Myers, “ACAP -- Application Configuration Access Protocol,” November 1997.) protocols as described in [USINGTLS] (Newman, C., “Using TLS with IMAP, POP3 and ACAP,” June 1999.). The XML namespace name for the STARTTLS extension is 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'.
Support for STARTTLS is REQUIRED in XMPP client and server implementations. An administrator of a given deployment may require the use of TLS for client-to-server communication, server-to-server communication, or both. A deployed client should use TLS to secure its stream with a server prior to attempting the completion of SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation), and deployed servers should use TLS between two domains for the purpose of securing server-to-server communication.
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Any entity that will act as a SASL client or a SASL server MUST maintain an ordered list of its preferred SASL mechanisms, where the list is ordered by the perceived strength of the mechanisms. A server MUST offer and a client MUST try SASL mechanisms in the order of their perceived strength. For example, if the server offers the ordered list "PLAIN DIGEST-MD5 GSSAPI" or "DIGEST-MD5 GSSAPI PLAIN" but the client's ordered list is "GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5", the client shall try GSSAPI first and then DIGEST-MD5 but shall never try PLAIN (since PLAIN is not on its list).
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The entities MUST NOT send any white space characters (matching production [3] content of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.)) within the root stream element as separators between elements (any white space characters shown in the STARTTLS examples provided in this document are included only for the sake of readability); this prohibition helps to ensure proper security layer byte precision.
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If the initiating entity chooses to use TLS, STARTTLS negotiation MUST be completed before proceeding to SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation); this order of negotiation is required to help safeguard authentication information sent during SASL negotiation, as well as to make it possible to base the use of the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism on a certificate (or other credentials) provided during prior TLS negotiation.
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The initiating entity resolves the hostname of the receiving entity as specified under Section 4 (TCP Binding), opens a TCP connection to the advertised port at the resolved IP address, and sends an initial stream header to the receiving entity; if the initiating entity is capable of STARTTLS negotiation, it MUST include the 'version' attribute set to a value of at least "1.0" in the initial stream header.
I: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
The receiving entity MUST send a response stream header to the initiating entity over the TCP connection opened by the initiating entity; if the receiving entity is capable of STARTTLS negotiation, it MUST include the 'version' attribute set to a value of at least "1.0" in the response stream header.
R: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='t7AMCin9zjMNwQKDnplntZPIDEI='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
The receiving entity then MUST send stream features to the initiating entity, which SHOULD include a <starttls/> element (qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls' namespace) to indicate that the receiving entity supports STARTTLS negotiation.
R: <stream:features>
<starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
</stream:features>
If the receiving entity requires the use of STARTTLS, it SHOULD include an empty <required/> element as a child of the <starttls/> element.
R: <stream:features>
<starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'>
<required/>
</starttls>
</stream:features>
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In order to begin the STARTTLS negotiation, the initiating entity issues the STARTTLS command (i.e., a <starttls/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls' namespace) to instruct the receiving entity that it wishes to begin a STARTTLS negotiation to secure the stream.
I: <starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
The receiving entity MUST reply with either a <proceed/> element (proceed case) or a <failure/> element (failure case) qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls' namespace.
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If the failure case occurs, the receiving entity MUST return a <failure/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls' namespace, terminate the XML stream, and terminate the underlying TCP connection. Causes for the failure case include but are not limited to:
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/> R: </stream:stream>
If the failure case occurs, the initiating entity MAY attempt to reconnect as explained under Section 4.5 (Reconnection).
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If the proceed case occurs, the receiving entity MUST return a <proceed/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls' namespace.
R: <proceed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
The receiving entity MUST consider the TLS negotiation to have begun immediately after sending the closing '>' character of the <proceed/> element to the initiating entity. The initiating entity MUST consider the TLS negotiation to have begun immediately after receiving the closing '>' character of the <proceed/> element from the receiving entity.
The entities now proceed to TLS negotiation as explained in the next section.
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In order to complete TLS negotiation over the TCP connection, the entities MUST follow the process defined in [TLS] (Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” April 2006.).
The following rules apply:
Note: See Section 15.7 (Mandatory-to-Implement Technologies) regarding ciphers that MUST be supported for TLS; naturally, other ciphers MAY be supported as well.
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If the TLS negotiation results in failure, the receiving entity MUST terminate the TCP connection.
The receiving entity MUST NOT send a closing </stream> tag before terminating the TCP connection, since the receiving entity and initiating entity MUST consider the original stream to be closed upon failure of the TLS negotiation.
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If the TLS negotiation is successful, then the entities MUST proceed as follows.
I: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Note: The initiating entity MUST NOT send a closing </stream> tag before sending the initial stream header, since the receiving entity and initiating entity MUST consider the original stream to be closed upon success of the TLS negotiation.
R: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='vgKi/bkYME8OAj4rlXMkpucAqe4='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
R: <stream:features>
<mechanisms xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<mechanism>EXTERNAL</mechanism>
<mechanism>PLAIN</mechanism>
<required/>
</mechanisms>
</stream:features>
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XMPP includes a method for authenticating a stream by means of an XMPP-specific profile of the Simple Authentication and Security Layer protocol (see [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.)). SASL provides a generalized method for adding authentication support to connection-based protocols, and XMPP uses an XML namespace profile of SASL that conforms to the profiling requirements of [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.).
Support for SASL negotiation is REQUIRED in XMPP client and server implementations.
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The following data formattting rules apply to the SASL negotiation:
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Upon successful SASL negotiation that involves negotiation of a security layer, the initiating entity MUST discard any knowledge obtained from the receiving entity that was not obtained via the SASL negotiation.
Upon successful SASL negotiation that involves negotiation of a security layer, the receiving entity MUST discard any knowledge obtained from the initiating entity that was not obtained via the SASL negotiation. The receiving entity SHOULD also include an updated list of SASL mechanisms with the stream features so that the initiating entity is able to detect any changes to the list of mechanisms supported by the receiving entity.
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Provision of a "simple username" may be supported by the selected SASL mechanism (e.g., this is supported by the DIGEST-MD5 and CRAM-MD5 mechanisms but not by the EXTERNAL and GSSAPI mechanisms). The simple username provided during authentication SHOULD be as follows:
- Client-to-server communication:
- The initiating entity's registered account name, i.e., a user name or node name as described under Section 3.3 (Node Identifier). The simple username MUST adhere to the Nodeprep (Nodeprep) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
- Server-to-server communication:
- The initiating entity's sending domain, i.e., IP address or fully qualified domain name as contained in an XMPP domain identifier. The simple username MUST adhere to the [NAMEPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),” March 2003.) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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If the initiating entity wishes to act on behalf of another entity and the selected SASL mechanism supports transmission of an authorization identity, the initiating entity MUST provide an authorization identity during SASL negotiation. If the initiating entity does not wish to act on behalf of another entity, it MUST NOT provide an authorization identity. As specified in [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.), the initiating entity MUST NOT provide an authorization identity unless the authorization identity is different from the default authorization identity derived from the authentication identity. If provided, the value of the authorization identity MUST be of the form <domain> (i.e., an XMPP domain identifier only) for servers and of the form <node@domain> (i.e., node identifier and domain identifier) for clients.
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[SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.) specifies that a using protocol such as XMPP can define two methods by which the protocol can save round trips where allowed for the SASL mechanism:
For the sake of protocol efficiency, it is RECOMMENDED for XMPP clients and servers to use these methods, however they MUST support the less efficient modes as well.
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The process for SASL negotiation is as follows.
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If SASL negotiation follows successful STARTTLS negotation (STARTTLS Negotiation), then the SASL negotiation occurs over the existing stream. If not, the initiating entity resolves the hostname of the receiving entity as specified under Section 4 (TCP Binding), opens a TCP connection to the advertised port at the resolved IP address, and sends an initial stream header to the receiving entity; if the initiating entity is capable of STARTTLS negotiation, it MUST include the 'version' attribute set to a value of at least "1.0" in the initial stream header.
I: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
The receiving entity MUST send a response stream header to the initiating entity; if the receiving entity is capable of SASL negotiation, it MUST include the 'version' attribute set to a value of at least "1.0" in the response stream header.
R: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='vgKi/bkYME8OAj4rlXMkpucAqe4='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
The receiving entity also MUST send stream features to the initiating entity, which SHOULD include the SASL stream feature, i.e., a <mechanisms/> element (qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace) that contains one <mechanism/> child element for each authentication mechanism the receiving entity offers to the initiating entity. The order of <mechanism/> elements in the XML indicates the preference order of the SASL mechanisms according to the receiving entity, however the initiating entity MUST maintain its own preference order independent of the preference order of the receiving entity.
R: <stream:features>
<mechanisms xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<mechanism>EXTERNAL</mechanism>
<mechanism>PLAIN</mechanism>
</mechanisms>
</stream:features>
Note: If during prior TLS negotiation the initiating entity presented a certificate that is acceptable to the receiving entity for purposes of strong identity verification in accordance with local service policies, the receiving entity SHOULD offer the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism to the initiating entity during SASL negotiation (refer to [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.)) and SHOULD prefer that mechanism. However, the EXTERNAL mechanism MAY be offered under other circumstances as well.
Note: If TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation) needs to be completed before a particular authentication mechanism may be used, the receiving entity MUST NOT provide that mechanism in the list of available SASL authentication mechanisms prior to TLS negotiation.
Note: See Section 15.7 (Mandatory-to-Implement Technologies) regarding mechanisms that MUST be supported; naturally, other SASL mechanisms MAY be supported as well (best practices for the use of several SASL mechanisms in the context of XMPP are described in [XEP‑0175] (Saint-Andre, P., “Best Practices for Use of SASL ANONYMOUS,” September 2006.) and [XEP‑0178] (Saint-Andre, P. and P. Millard, “Best Practices for Use of SASL EXTERNAL with Certificates,” February 2007.)).
If successful SASL negotiation is required for interaction with the receiving entity, the receiving entity SHOULD signal that fact by including a <required/> element as a child of the <mechanisms/> element.
R: <stream:features>
<mechanisms xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<mechanism>EXTERNAL</mechanism>
<mechanism>PLAIN</mechanism>
<required/>
</mechanisms>
</stream:features>
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In order to begin the SASL negotiation, the initiating entity sends an <auth/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace and includes an appropriate value for the 'mechanism' attribute. This element MAY contain XML character data (in SASL terminology, the "initial response") if the mechanism supports or requires it; if the initiating entity needs to send a zero-length initial response, it MUST transmit the response as a single equals sign character ("="), which indicates that the response is present but contains no data.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='PLAIN'>R0m30R0cks</auth>
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If necessary, the receiving entity challenges the initiating entity by sending a <challenge/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace; this element MAY contain XML character data (which MUST be generated in accordance with the definition of the SASL mechanism chosen by the initiating entity).
The initiating entity responds to the challenge by sending a <response/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace; this element MAY contain XML character data (which MUST be generated in accordance with the definition of the SASL mechanism chosen by the initiating entity).
If necessary, the receiving entity sends more challenges and the initiating entity sends more responses.
This series of challenge/response pairs continues until one of three things happens:
These scenarios are described in the following sections.
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The initiating entity aborts the handshake by sending an <abort/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace.
I: <abort xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
Upon receiving an <abort/> element, the receiving entity MUST return a <failure/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace and containing an <aborted/> child element.
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
<aborted/>
</failure>
Where appropriate for the chosen SASL mechanism, the receiving entity SHOULD allow a configurable but reasonable number of retries (at least 2 and no more than 5); this enables the initiating entity (e.g., an end-user client) to tolerate incorrectly-provided credentials (e.g., a mistyped password) without being forced to reconnect.
If the initiating entity attempts a reasonable number of retries with the same SASL mechanism and all attempts fail, it MAY fall back to the next mechanism in its ordered list by sending a new <auth/> request to the receiving entity. If there are no remaining mechanisms in the list, the initiating entity SHOULD instead send an <abort/> element to the receiving entity.
If the initiating entity exceeds the number of retries, the receiving entity MUST return a stream error (which SHOULD be <policy-violation/>) and terminate the TCP connection.
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The receiving entity reports failure of the handshake by sending a <failure/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace (the particular cause of failure SHOULD be communicated in an appropriate child element of the <failure/> element as defined under Section 7.5 (SASL Errors)).
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<not-authorized/>
</failure>
If the failure case occurs, the receiving entity SHOULD allow a configurable but reasonable number of retries (at least 2 and no more than 5); this enables the initiating entity (e.g., an end-user client) to tolerate incorrectly-provided credentials (e.g., a mistyped password) without being forced to reconnect.
If the initiating entity exceeds the number of retries, the receiving entity MUST return a stream error (which SHOULD be <policy-violation/>) and terminate the TCP connection.
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The receiving entity reports success of the handshake by sending a <success/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl' namespace; this element MAY contain XML character data (in SASL terminology, "additional data with success") if required by the chosen SASL mechanism; if the receiving entity needs to send additional data of zero length, it MUST transmit the data as a single equals sign character ("=").
R: <success xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
Upon receiving the <success/> element, the initiating entity MUST initiate a new stream over the existing TCP connection by sending an initial stream header to the receiving entity.
I: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
Note: It initiating entity MUST NOT send a closing </stream> tag before sending the initial stream header, since the receiving entity and initiating entity MUST consider the original stream to be closed upon sending or receiving the <success/> element.
Upon receiving the initial stream header from the initiating entity, the receiving entity MUST respond by sending a response XML stream header to the initiating entity.
R: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='gPybzaOzBmaADgxKXu9UClbprp0='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
The receiving entity MUST also send stream features, containing any further available features or containing no features (via an empty <features/> element); any such additional features not defined herein MUST be defined by the relevant extension to XMPP.
R: <stream:features>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<required/>
</bind>
</stream:features>
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The profiling requirements of [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.) require that the following information be supplied by a protocol definition:
- service name:
- "xmpp"
- initiation sequence:
- After the initiating entity provides an opening XML stream header and the receiving entity replies in kind, the receiving entity provides a list of acceptable authentication methods. The initiating entity chooses one method from the list and sends it to the receiving entity as the value of the 'mechanism' attribute possessed by an <auth/> element, optionally including an initial response to avoid a round trip.
- exchange sequence:
- Challenges and responses are carried through the exchange of <challenge/> elements from receiving entity to initiating entity and <response/> elements from initiating entity to receiving entity. The receiving entity reports failure by sending a <failure/> element and success by sending a <success/> element; the initiating entity aborts the exchange by sending an <abort/> element. Upon successful negotiation, both sides consider the original XML stream to be closed and new stream headers are sent by both entities.
- security layer negotiation:
- The security layer takes effect immediately after sending the closing '>' character of the <success/> element for the receiving entity, and immediately after receiving the closing '>' character of the <success/> element for the initiating entity. The order of layers is first [TCP] (Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” September 1981.), then [TLS] (Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” April 2006.), then [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.), then XMPP.
- use of the authorization identity:
- The authorization identity may be used in XMPP to denote the non-default <node@domain> of a client or the sending <domain> of a server; an empty string is equivalent to an absent authorization identity.
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The syntax of SASL errors is as follows:
<failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<defined-condition/>
[<text xml:lang='langcode'>
OPTIONAL descriptive text
</text>]
</failure>
Where "defined-condition" is one of the SASL-related error conditions defined in the following sections.
Inclusion of a defined condition is REQUIRED.
Inclusion of the <text/> element is OPTIONAL, and can be used to provide application-specific information about the error condition, which information MAY be displayed to a human but only as a supplement to the defined condition.
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The receiving entity acknowledges an <abort/> element sent by the initiating entity; sent in reply to the <abort/> element.
I: <abort xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<aborted/>
</failure>
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The account of the initiating entity has been temporarily disabled; sent in reply to an <auth/> element (with or without initial response data) or a <response/> element.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='PLAIN'>password</auth>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<account-disabled/>
<text xml:lang='en'>Call 212-555-1212 for assistance.</text>
</failure>
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The authentication failed because the initiating entity provided credentials that have expired; sent in reply to a <response/> element or an <auth/> element with initial response data.
I: <response xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
[ ... ]
</response>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<credentials-expired/>
</failure>
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The mechanism requested by the initiating entity cannot be used unless the underlying stream is encrypted; sent in reply to an <auth/> element (with or without initial response data) or a <response/> element.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='PLAIN'>password</auth>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<encryption-required/>
</failure>
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The data provided by the initiating entity could not be processed because the [BASE64] (Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings,” October 2006.) encoding is incorrect (e.g., because the encoding does not adhere to the definition in Section 4 of [BASE64] (Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings,” October 2006.)); sent in reply to a <response/> element or an <auth/> element with initial response data.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='DIGEST-MD5'>[ ... ]</auth>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<incorrect-encoding/>
</failure>
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The authzid provided by the initiating entity is invalid, either because it is incorrectly formatted or because the initiating entity does not have permissions to authorize that ID; sent in reply to a <response/> element or an <auth/> element with initial response data.
I: <response xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
[ ... ]
</response>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<invalid-authzid/>
</failure>
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The initiating entity did not provide a mechanism or requested a mechanism that is not supported by the receiving entity; sent in reply to an <auth/> element.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='CRAM-MD5'/>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<invalid-mechanism/>
</failure>
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The request is malformed (e.g., the <auth/> element includes initial response data but the mechanism does not allow that, or the data sent violates the syntax for the specified SASL mechanism); sent in reply to an <abort/>, <auth/>, <challenge/>, or <response/> element.
(In the following example, the XML character data of the <auth/> element contains more than 255 UTF-8-encoded Unicode characters and therefore violates the "token" production for the SASL ANONYMOUS mechanism as specified in [ANONYMOUS] (Zeilenga, K., “Anonymous Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) Mechanism,” June 2006.).)
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='ANONYMOUS'>[ ... some-long-token ... ]</auth>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<malformed-request/>
</failure>
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The mechanism requested by the initiating entity is weaker than server policy permits for that initiating entity; sent in reply to an <auth/> element (with or without initial response data) or a <response/> element.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='PLAIN'>password</auth>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<mechanism-too-weak/>
</failure>
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The authentication failed because the initiating entity did not provide proper credentials; sent in reply to a <response/> element or an <auth/> element with initial response data.
I: <response xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
[ ... ]
</response>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<not-authorized/>
</failure>
Note: This error condition includes but is not limited to the case of incorrect credentials or an unknown username. In order to discourage directory harvest attacks, no differentiation is made between incorrect credentials and an unknown username.
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The authentication failed because of a temporary error condition within the receiving entity, and the initiating entity should try again later; sent in reply to an <auth/> element or a <response/> element.
I: <response xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
[ ... ]
</response>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<temporary-auth-failure/>
</failure>
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The authentication failed because the mechanism cannot be used until the initiating entity provides (for one time only) a plaintext password so that the receiving entity can build a hashed password for use in future authentication attempts; sent in reply to an <auth/> element with or without initial response data.
I: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='CRAM-MD5'>[ ... ]</auth>
R: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<transition-needed/>
</failure>
| TOC |
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After a client authenticates with a server, it MUST bind a specific resource to the stream so that the server can properly address the client (see Section 3 (Addresses)). That is, there MUST be an XMPP resource identifier associated with the bare JID (<node@domain>) of the client, with the result that the address for use over that stream is a full JID of the form <node@domain/resource>. This ensures that the server can deliver XML stanzas to and receive XML stanzas from the client (see Section 11 (Server Rules for Processing XML Stanzas)). After binding a resource to the stream, the client is referred to as a connected resource.
If, before completing the resource binding step, the client attempts to send an outbound XML stanza (i.e., a stanza not directed to the server itself or to the client's own account), the server MUST NOT process the stanza and SHOULD return a <not-authorized/> stream error to the client.
Support for resource binding is REQUIRED in XMPP client and server implementations.
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Upon sending a response stream header to the client after successful SASL negotiation, the server MUST include a <bind/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind' namespace in the stream features it presents to the client; this <bind/> element SHOULD include an empty <required/> element to explicitly indicate that resource binding must be completed at this stage of the stream negotiation process. (Note: The server SHOULD NOT include the resource binding stream feature until after successful SASL negotiation.)
S: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='gPybzaOzBmaADgxKXu9UClbprp0='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <stream:features>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<required/>
</bind>
</stream:features>
Upon being so informed that resource binding is required, the client MUST bind a resource to the stream as described in the following sections.
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A resource identifier MUST at a minimum be unique among the connected resources for that <node@domain>. Enforcement of this policy is the responsibility of the server.
A resource identifier may be security-critical. For example, if a malicious entity can guess a client's resource identifier then it may be able to determine if the client (and therefore the controlling principal) is online or offline, thus resulting in a presence leak as described under Section 15.13 (Presence Leaks). Traditionally, XMPP resource identifiers have been generated by clients in ways that are not secure (e.g., hardcoding the resource identifier to the name of the client or to a common location such as "home" or "work"). However, for the sake of proper security, a resource identifier SHOULD be random (see [RANDOM] (Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, “Randomness Requirements for Security,” June 2005.)). A suitably random resource identifier can be generated by either the client or the server. It is RECOMMENDED that the resource identifier incorporate a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID), for which the format specified in [UUID] (Leach, P., Mealling, M., and R. Salz, “A Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace,” July 2005.) is RECOMMENDED. One approach is for the resource idenfitier to incorporate human-friendly text (if desired) followed by the UUID, such as "home 4db06f061ea411dcaca3000bcd821bfb" instead of simply "home". This can be accomplished in several ways:
| TOC |
A server that supports resource binding MUST be able to generate an XMPP resource identifier on behalf of a client.
| TOC |
A client requests a server-generated resource identifier by sending an IQ stanza of type "set" (see Section 9.2.3 (IQ Semantics)) containing an empty <bind/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind' namespace.
C: <iq id='bind_1' type='set'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'/>
</iq>
Once the server has generated an XMPP resource identifier for the client, it MUST return an IQ stanza of type "result" to the client, which MUST include a <jid/> child element that specifies the full JID for the connected resource as determined by the server.
S: <iq id='bind_1' type='result'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<jid>
juliet@im.example.com/4db06f061ea411dcaca3000bcd821bfb
</jid>
</bind>
</iq>
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It is possible that the client is not allowed to bind a resource to the stream (e.g., because the node or user has reached a limit on the number of connected resources allowed). In this case, the server MUST return a <not-allowed/> stanza error to the client.
S: <iq id='bind_1' type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<not-allowed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
A client MAY attempt to specify the resource identifier on its own rather than asking the server to generate a resource identifier on its behalf.
| TOC |
A client asks its server to accept a client-generated resource identifier by sending an IQ stanza of type "set" containing a <bind/> element with a child <resource/> element containing non-zero-length XML character data.
C: <iq id='bind_2' type='set'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<resource>balcony</resource>
</bind>
</iq>
The server MAY accept the resource identifier provided by the client, in which case it returns an IQ stanza of type "result" to the client, including a <jid/> child element that specifies the full JID for the connected resource.
S: <iq id='bind_2' type='result'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<jid>juliet@im.example.com/balcony</jid>
</bind>
</iq>
However, the server MAY instead override the client-generated resource identifier and generate a resource identifier on behalf of the client as shown in the previous section, optionally incorporating the human-friendly text proposed by the client.
S: <iq id='bind_2' type='result'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<jid>
juliet@im.example.com/balcony 4db06f061ea411dcaca3000bcd821bfb
</jid>
</bind>
</iq>
| TOC |
When a client attempts to set its own XMPP resource identifier during resource binding, the following stanza error conditions are possible:
| TOC |
If the client is not allowed to bind a resource to the stream, the server MUST return a <not-allowed/> error.
S: <iq id='bind_2' type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<not-allowed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
If the provided resource identifier cannot be processed by the server, the server MAY return a <bad-request/> error (but SHOULD instead apply the Resourceprep (Resourceprep) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) or otherwise process the resource identifier so that it is in conformance).
S: <iq id='bind_2' type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<bad-request xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
If there is already a connected resource of the same name, the server MUST do one of the following:
Which of these the server does is up to the implementation, although it is RECOMMENDED to implement case #1.
In case #2, the server MUST send a <conflict/> stream error to the current resource, terminate the XML stream and underlying TCP connection for the current resource, and return an IQ stanza of type "result" (indicating success) to the newly-requested resource.
In case #3, the server MUST send a <conflict/> stanza error to the newly-requested resource but maintain the XML stream for that connection so that the newly-requested resource has an opportunity to negotiate a non-conflicting resource identifier before sending another request for resource binding.
| TOC |
A server MAY support binding of multiple resources to the same stream. This functionality is desirable in certain environments (e.g., for devices that are unable to open more than one TCP connection or when a machine runs a local XMPP client daemon that is used by multiple applications).
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If a server supports binding of multiple resources to a stream, it MUST enable a client to unbind resources. A server that supports unbinding MUST also support binding of multiple resources. Thus a client can discover whether a server supports binding of multiple resources by determining if the server advertises a stream feature of <unbind/>, as follows.
S: <stream:features>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<required/>
</bind>
<unbind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'/>
</stream:features>
| TOC |
A connected client binds an additional resource by following the protocol for binding of the original resource, i.e., by sending an IQ stanza of type "set" containing a <bind/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind' namespace (either empty to request server generation of the resource identifier or containing a <resource/> element with XML character data to request client generation of the resource identifier).
| TOC |
| TOC |
A client unbinds a resource by sending an IQ stanza of type "set" containing an <unbind/> element qualified by the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind' namespace, which in turn contains a child element of <resource/> whose XML character data specifies the resource to be unbound:
C: <iq id='unbind_1' type='set'>
<unbind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<resource>someresource</resource>
</unbind>
</iq>
If no error occurs, the server MUST unbind the resource and no longer accept stanzas whose 'from' address specifies the full JID associated with that resource.
S: <iq id='unbind_1' type='result'/>
When a client unbinds the only resource associated with the stream, the server SHOULD close the stream and terminate the TCP connection.
S: <iq id='unbind_1' type='result'/> S: </stream:stream>
| TOC |
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If the server understands the 'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind' namespace but does not understand the <unbind/> element, it MUST return a stanza error, which MUST be <feature-not-implemented/>.
S: <iq id='unbind_1' type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<feature-not-implemented
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
If there is no such resource for that stream, the server MUST return an error of <item-not-found/>.
S: <iq id='unbind_1' type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<item-not-found xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
When a client binds multiple resources to the same stream, proper management of 'from' addresses is imperative. In particular, a client MUST specify a 'from' address on every stanza it sends over a stream to which it has bound multiple resources, where the 'from' address is the full JID (<node@domain.tld/resource>) associated with the relevant resource. If a client does not specify a 'from' address on a stanza it sends over a stream to which it has bound multiple resources, the server MUST return the stanza to the client with an <unknown-sender/> stanza error.
C: <message to='romeo@example.net'>
<body>Wherefore art thou?</body>
</message>
S: <message from='romeo@example.net'
type='error'>
<body>Wherefore art thou?</body>
<error type='modify'>
<unknown-sender xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</message>
Naturally, the rules regarding validation of asserted 'from' addresses still apply (see Section 11 (Server Rules for Processing XML Stanzas)).
| TOC |
After a client has connected to a server or two servers have connected to each other, either party can send XML stanzas over the negotiated stream. Three kinds of XML stanza are defined for the 'jabber:client' and 'jabber:server' namespaces: <message/>, <presence/>, and <iq/>. In addition, there are five common attributes for these stanza types. These common attributes, as well as the basic semantics of the three stanza types, are defined herein; more detailed information regarding the syntax of XML stanzas for instant messaging and presence applications is provided in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.), and for other applications in the relevant XMPP extension specifications.
An XML stanza is the basic unit of meaning in XMPP. A server MUST NOT process a partial stanza and a server MUST NOT attach meaning to the transmission timing of any child element within a stanza.
Support for the XML stanza syntax and semantics defined herein is REQUIRED in XMPP client and server implementations.
| TOC |
The following five attributes are common to message, presence, and IQ stanzas.
| TOC |
The 'to' attribute specifies the JID of the intended recipient for the stanza.
<message to='romeo@example.net'> <body>Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?</body> </message>
For information about server processing of inbound and outbound XML stanzas based on the nature of the 'to' address, refer to Section 11 (Server Rules for Processing XML Stanzas).
| TOC |
The following rules apply to inclusion of the 'to' attribute in the context of XML streams qualified by the 'jabber:client' namespace (i.e., client-to-server streams).
| TOC |
The following rules apply to inclusion of the 'to' attribute in the context of XML streams qualified by the 'jabber:server' namespace (i.e., server-to-server streams).
| TOC |
The 'from' attribute specifies the JID of the sender.
<message from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='romeo@example.net'>
<body>Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?</body>
</message>
| TOC |
The following rules apply to the 'from' attribute in the context of XML streams qualified by the 'jabber:client' namespace (i.e., client-to-server streams).
| TOC |
The following rules apply to the 'from' attribute in the context of XML streams qualified by the 'jabber:server' namespace (i.e., server-to-server streams).
Enforcement of these rules helps to prevent a denial of service attack launched from a rogue server.
| TOC |
The 'id' attribute MAY be used by a sending entity for internal tracking of stanzas that it sends and receives (especially for tracking the request-response interaction inherent in the semantics of IQ stanzas). The value of the 'id' attribute MAY be unique globally, within a domain, or within a stream. The semantics of IQ stanzas impose additional restrictions; see Section 9.2.3 (IQ Semantics).
| TOC |
The 'type' attribute specifies the purpose or context of the message, presence, or IQ stanza. The particular allowable values for the 'type' attribute vary depending on whether the stanza is a message, presence, or IQ stanza. The defined values for message and presence stanzas are specific to instant messaging and presence applications and therefore are specified in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.), whereas the values for IQ stanzas specify the role of an IQ stanza in a structured request-response exchange and thus are specified under Section 9.2.3 (IQ Semantics). The only 'type' value common to all three stanzas is "error"; see Section 9.3 (Stanza Errors).
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A stanza SHOULD possess an 'xml:lang' attribute (as defined in Section 2.12 of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.)) if the stanza contains XML character data that is intended to be presented to a human user (as explained in [CHARSET] (Alvestrand, H., “IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages,” January 1998.), "internationalization is for humans"). The value of the 'xml:lang' attribute specifies the default language of any such human-readable XML character data.
<presence from='romeo@example.net/orchard' xml:lang='en'> <show>dnd</show> <status>Wooing Juliet</status> </presence>
The value of the 'xml:lang' attribute MAY be overridden by the 'xml:lang' attribute of a specific child element.
<presence from='romeo@example.net/orchard' xml:lang='en'> <show>dnd</show> <status>Wooing Juliet</status> <status xml:lang='cs'>Dvořím se Julii</status> </presence
If an outbound stanza generated by a client does not possess an 'xml:lang' attribute, the client's server MAY add an 'xml:lang' attribute whose value is that specified for the stream as defined under Section 5.3 (Stream Attributes).
C: <presence from='romeo@example.net/orchard'>
<show>dnd</show>
<status>Wooing Juliet</status>
</presence>
S: <presence from='romeo@example.net/orchard'
to='juliet@im.example.com'
xml:lang='en'>
<show>dnd</show>
<status>Wooing Juliet</status>
</presence>
If an inbound stanza received received by a client or server does not possess an 'xml:lang' attribute, an implementation MUST assume that the default language is that specified for the stream as defined under Section 5.3 (Stream Attributes).
The value of the 'xml:lang' attribute MUST conform to the NMTOKEN datatype (as defined in Section 2.3 of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.)) and MUST conform to the format defined in [LANGTAGS] (Phillips, A. and M. Davis, “Tags for Identifying Languages,” September 2006.).
A server MUST NOT modify or delete 'xml:lang' attributes on stanzas it receives from other entities.
| TOC |
| TOC |
The <message/> stanza can be seen as a "push" mechanism whereby one entity pushes information to another entity, similar to the communications that occur in a system such as email. All message stanzas SHOULD possess a 'to' attribute that specifies the intended recipient of the message; upon receiving such a stanza, a server SHOULD route or deliver it to the intended recipient (see Section 11 (Server Rules for Processing XML Stanzas) for general routing and delivery rules related to XML stanzas).
| TOC |
The <presence/> stanza can be seen as a specialized broadcast or "publish-subscribe" mechanism, whereby multiple entities receive information about an entity to which they have subscribed (in this case, network availability information). In general, a publishing entity (client) SHOULD send a presence stanza with no 'to' attribute, in which case the server to which the entity is connected SHOULD broadcast or multiplex that stanza to all subscribing entities. However, a publishing entity MAY also send a presence stanza with a 'to' attribute, in which case the server SHOULD route or deliver that stanza to the intended recipient. See Section 11 (Server Rules for Processing XML Stanzas) for general routing and delivery rules related to XML stanzas, and [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.) for rules specific to presence applications.
| TOC |
Info/Query, or IQ, is a request-response mechanism, similar in some ways to [HTTP] (Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1,” June 1999.). The semantics of IQ enable an entity to make a request of, and receive a response from, another entity. The data content of the request and response is defined by the schema or other structural definition associated with the XML namespace that qualifies the direct child element of the IQ element (see Section 9.4 (Extended Content)), and the interaction is tracked by the requesting entity through use of the 'id' attribute. Thus, IQ interactions follow a common pattern of structured data exchange such as get/result or set/result (although an error may be returned in reply to a request if appropriate):
Requesting Responding
Entity Entity
---------- ----------
| |
| <iq id='1' type='get'> |
| [ ... payload ... ] |
| </iq> |
| -------------------------> |
| |
| <iq id='1' type='result'> |
| [ ... payload ... ] |
| </iq> |
| <------------------------- |
| |
| <iq id='2' type='set'> |
| [ ... payload ... ] |
| </iq> |
| -------------------------> |
| |
| <iq id='2' type='error'> |
| [ ... condition ... ] |
| </iq> |
| <------------------------- |
| |
In order to enforce these semantics, the following rules apply:
| TOC |
Stanza-related errors are handled in a manner similar to stream errors (Stream Errors). Unlike stream errors, stanza errors are recoverable; therefore they do not result in termination of the XML stream and underlying TCP connection. Instead, the entity that discovers the error condition returns an ERROR STANZA to the sender, i.e., a stanza of the same kind (message, presence, or IQ) whose 'type' attribute is set to a value of "error" and which contains an <error/> child element that specifies the error condition. The specified error condition provides a hint regarding actions that the sender can take to remedy the error.
| TOC |
The following rules apply to stanza errors:
| TOC |
The syntax for stanza-related errors is:
<stanza-kind from='intended-recipient' to='sender' type='error'>
[OPTIONAL to include sender XML here]
<error type='error-type'>
<defined-condition xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
[<text xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'
xml:lang='langcode'>
OPTIONAL descriptive text
</text>]
[OPTIONAL application-specific condition element]
</error>
</stanza-kind>
The "stanza-kind" MUST be one of message, presence, or iq.
The "error-type MUST be one of the following:
The <error/> element:
Note: The <text/> element is OPTIONAL. If included, it SHOULD be used only to provide descriptive or diagnostic information that supplements the meaning of a defined condition or application-specific condition. It SHOULD NOT be interpreted programmatically by an application. It SHOULD NOT be used as the error message presented to a user, but MAY be shown in addition to the error message associated with the included condition element (or elements).
| TOC |
The following conditions are defined for use in stanza errors.
| TOC |
The sender has sent a stanza containing XML that does not conform to the appropriate schema or that cannot be processed (e.g., an IQ stanza that includes an unrecognized value of the 'type' attribute, or an element that is qualified by a recognized namespace but that violates the defined syntax for the element); the associated error type SHOULD be "modify".
C: <iq from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
id='some-id'
to='im.example.com'
type='subscribe'>
<ping xmlns='urn:xmpp:ping'/>
</iq>
S: <iq from='im.example.com'
id='some-id'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<bad-request xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
Access cannot be granted because an existing resource exists with the same name or address; the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel".
C: <iq id='bind_2' type='set'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<resource>balcony</resource>
</bind>
</iq>
S: <iq id='bind_2' type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<conflict xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
The feature represented in the XML stanza is not implemented by the intended recipient or an intermediate server and therefore the stanza cannot be processed (e.g., the entity understands the namespace but does not recognize the element name); the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel" or "modify".
C: <iq from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
id='subscriptions1'
to='pubsub.example.com'
type='get'>
<pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
<subscriptions/>
</pubsub>
</iq>
E: <iq from='pubsub.example.com
id='subscriptions1'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<feature-not-implemented
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
<unsupported
xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#errors'
feature='retrieve-subscriptions'/>
</error>
</iq>
| TOC |
The requesting entity does not possess the required permissions to perform the action; the associated error type SHOULD be "auth".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='auth'>
<forbidden xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
| TOC |
The recipient or server can no longer be contacted at this address, typically on a permanent basis; the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel" or "modify" and the error stanza SHOULD include a new address as the XML character data of the <gone/> element (which SHOULD be a URI or IRI at which the entity can be contacted, typically an XMPP IRI as specified in [XMPP‑URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” February 2008.)).
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<gone xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'>
xmpp:conference.example.com
</gone>
</error>
</presence>
| TOC |
The server could not process the stanza because of a misconfiguration or an otherwise-undefined internal server error; the associated error type SHOULD be "wait" or "cancel".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='wait'>
<internal-server-error
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
| TOC |
The addressed JID or item requested cannot be found; the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel" or "modify".
C: <iq id='unbind_1' type='set'>
<unbind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<resource>someresource</resource>
</unbind>
</iq>
S: <iq id='unbind_1' type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<item-not-found xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
Note: An application MUST NOT return this error if doing so would provide information about the intended recipient's network availability to an entity that is not authorized to know such information; instead it SHOULD return a <service-unavailable/> error.
| TOC |
The sending entity has provided or communicated an XMPP address (e.g., a value of the 'to' attribute) or aspect thereof (e.g., an XMPP resource identifier) that does not adhere to the syntax defined under Section 3 (Addresses); the associated error type SHOULD be "modify".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='ch@r@cters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='ch@r@cters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<jid-malformed
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
| TOC |
The recipient or server understands the request but is refusing to process it because it does not meet criteria defined by the recipient or server (e.g., a local policy regarding stanza size limits or acceptable words in messages); the associated error type SHOULD be "modify".
C: <message to='juliet@im.example.com' id='foo'>
<body>[ ... the-emacs-manual ... ]</body>
</message>
S: <message from='juliet@im.example.com' id='foo'>
<error type='modify'>
<not-acceptable
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</message>
| TOC |
The recipient or server does not allow any entity to perform the action (e.g., sending to entities at a blacklisted domain); the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'>
<error type='cancel'>
<not-allowed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
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The sender must provide proper credentials before being allowed to perform the action, or has provided improper credentials; the associated error type SHOULD be "auth".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'>
<error type='auth'>
<not-authorized xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
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The item requested has not changed since it was last requested; the associated error type SHOULD be "continue".
C: <iq from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'
id='roster2'
type='get'>
<query xmlns='jabber:iq:roster'>
<headers xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/shim'>
<header name='If-None-Match'>
some-long-opaque-string
</header>
</headers>
</query>
</iq>
S: <iq type='error'
to='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'
id='roster2'>
<query xmlns='jabber:iq:roster'>
<headers xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/shim'>
<header name='If-None-Match'>
some-long-opaque-string
</header>
</headers>
</query>
<error type='modify'>
<not-modified xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
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The requesting entity is not authorized to access the requested service because payment is required; the associated error type SHOULD be "auth".
C: <iq from='romeo@example.net/foo'
id='items1'
to='pubsub.example.com'
type='get'>
<pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
<items node='my_musings'/>
</pubsub>
</iq>
E: <iq from='pubsub.example.com'
id='items1'
to='romeo@example.net/foo'
type='error'>
<error type='auth'>
<payment-required
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
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The intended recipient is temporarily unavailable; the associated error type SHOULD be "wait".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'>
<error type='wait'>
<recipient-unavailable
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
Note: An application MUST NOT return this error if doing so would provide information about the intended recipient's network availability to an entity that is not authorized to know such information; instead it SHOULD return a <service-unavailable/> error.
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The recipient or server is redirecting requests for this information to another entity, typically in a temporary fashion; the associated error type SHOULD be "modify" and the error stanza SHOULD contain the alternate address in the XML character data of the <redirect/> element (which SHOULD be a URI or IRI at which the entity can be contacted, typically an XMPP IRI as specified in [XMPP‑URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” February 2008.)).
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<redirect xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'>
xmpp:characters@conference.example.org
</redirect>
</error>
</presence>
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The requesting entity is not authorized to access the requested service because prior registration is required; the associated error type SHOULD be "auth".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'>
<error type='auth'>
<registration-required
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
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A remote server or service specified as part or all of the JID of the intended recipient does not exist; the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'>
<error type='wait'>
<remote-server-not-found
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
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A remote server or service specified as part or all of the JID of the intended recipient (or required to fulfill a request) could not be contacted within a reasonable amount of time; the associated error type SHOULD be "wait".
C: <presence
from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'>
<x xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc'/>
</presence>
E: <presence
from='characters@muc.example.com/JulieC'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'>
<error type='wait'>
<remote-server-timeout
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</presence>
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The server or recipient lacks the system resources necessary to service the request; the associated error type SHOULD be "wait".
C: <iq from='romeo@example.net/foo'
id='items1'
to='pubsub.example.com'
type='get'>
<pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
<items node='my_musings'/>
</pubsub>
</iq>
E: <iq from='pubsub.example.com'
id='items1'
to='romeo@example.net/foo'
type='error'>
<error type='wait'>
<resource-constraint
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</iq>
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The server or recipient does not currently provide the requested service; the associated error type SHOULD be "cancel".
C: <message from='romeo@example.net/foo'
to='juliet@im.example.com'>
<body>Hello?</body>
</message>
S: <message from='juliet@im.example.com/foo'
to='romeo@example.net'>
<error type='cancel'>
<service-unavailable
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</message>
An application SHOULD return a <service-unavailable/> error instead of <item-not-found/> or <recipient-unavailable/> if sending one of the latter errors would provide information about the intended recipient's network availability to an entity that is not authorized to know such information.
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The requesting entity is not authorized to access the requested service because a prior subscription is required; the associated error type SHOULD be "auth".
C: <message
from='romeo@example.net/orchard'
to='playbot@shakespeare.example.com'
<body>help</body>
</message>
E: <message
from='playbot@shakespeare.example.com'
to='romeo@example.net/orchard'
type='error'>
<error type='auth'>
<subscription-required
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</message>
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The error condition is not one of those defined by the other conditions in this list; any error type may be associated with this condition, and it SHOULD be used only in conjunction with an application-specific condition.
C: <message
from='northumberland@shakespeare.lit'
id='richard2-4.1.247'
to='kingrichard@royalty.england.lit'>
<body>My lord, dispatch; read o'er these articles.</body>
<amp xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/amp'>
<rule action='notify'
condition='deliver'
value='stored'/>
</amp>
S: <message from='example.org'
id='amp1'
to='northumberland@example.net/field'
type='error'>
<amp xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/amp'
from='kingrichard@example.org'
status='error'
to='northumberland@example.net/field'>
<rule action='error'
condition='deliver'
value='stored'/>
</amp>
<error type='modify'>
<undefined-condition
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
<failed-rules xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/amp#errors'>
<rule action='error'
condition='deliver'
value='stored'/>
</failed-rules>
</error>
</message>
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The recipient or server understood the request but was not expecting it at this time (e.g., the request was out of order); the associated error type SHOULD be "wait" or "modify".
C: <iq from='romeo@example.net/foo'
id='unsub1'
to='pubsub.example.com'
type='set'>
<pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
<unsubscribe
node='my_musings'
jid='romeo@example.net'/>
</pubsub>
</iq>
E: <iq from='pubsub.example.com'
id='unsub1'
to='romeo@example.net/foo'
type='error'>
<error type='cancel'>
<unexpected-request
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
<not-subscribed
xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#errors'/>
</error>
</iq>
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The stanza 'from' address specified by a connected client is not valid for the stream (e.g., the stanza does not include a 'from' address when multiple resources are bound to the stream as described under Section 8.6.4 (From Addresses)); the associated error type SHOULD be "modify".
C: <message to='romeo@example.net'>
<body>Wherefore art thou?</body>
</message>
S: <message from='romeo@example.net'
type='error'>
<body>Wherefore art thou?</body>
<error type='modify'>
<unknown-sender xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
</error>
</message>
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As noted, an application MAY provide application-specific stanza error information by including a properly-namespaced child in the error element. The application-specific element SHOULD supplement or further qualify a defined element. Thus, the <error/> element will contain two or three child elements:
<iq id='some-id' type='error'>
<error type='modify'>
<bad-request xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
<too-many-parameters xmlns='application-ns'/>
</error>
</iq>
<message type='error' id='another-id'>
<error type='modify'>
<undefined-condition
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'/>
<text xml:lang='en'
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'>
[ ... application-specific information ... ]
</text>
<special-application-condition xmlns='application-ns'/>
</error>
</message>
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While the message, presence, and IQ stanzas provide basic semantics for messaging, availability, and request-response interactions, XMPP uses XML namespaces (see [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.) to extend the basic stanza syntax for the purpose of providing additional functionality. Thus a message or presence stanza MAY contain one or more optional child elements specifying content that extends the meaning of the message (e.g., an XHTML-formatted version of the message body as described in [XEP‑0071] (Saint-Andre, P., “XHTML-IM,” August 2007.)), and an IQ stanza of type "get" or "set" MUST contain one such child element. This child element MAY have any name and MUST possess a namespace declaration (other than "jabber:client", "jabber:server", or "http://etherx.jabber.org/streams") that defines all data contained within the child element. Such a child element is said to be EXTENDED CONTENT and its namespace name is said to be an EXTENDED NAMESPACE.
Support for any given extended namespace is OPTIONAL on the part of any implementation. If an entity does not understand such a namespace, the entity's expected behavior depends on whether the entity is (1) the recipient or (2) an entity that is routing the stanza to the recipient.
- Recipient:
- If a recipient receives a stanza that contains a child element it does not understand, it SHOULD silently ignore that particular XML data, i.e., it SHOULD not process it or present it to a user or associated application (if any). In particular:
- If an entity receives a message or presence stanza that contains XML data qualified by a namespace it does not understand, the portion of the stanza that qualified by the unknown namespace SHOULD be ignored.
- If an entity receives a message stanza whose only child element is qualified by a namespace it does not understand, it MUST ignore the entire stanza.
- If an entity receives an IQ stanza of type "get" or "set" containing a child element qualified by a namespace it does not understand, the entity SHOULD return an IQ stanza of type "error" with an error condition of <service-unavailable/>.
- Router:
- If a routing entity (typically a server) handles a stanza that contains a child element it does not understand, it SHOULD ignore the associated XML data by routing or delivering it untouched to the recipient.
| TOC |
| TOC |
The following examples show the XMPP data flow for a client negotiating an XML stream with a server, exchanging XML stanzas, and closing the negotiated stream. The server is "im.example.com", the server requires use of TLS, the client authenticates via the SASL PLAIN mechanism as "juliet@im.example.com", and the client binds a server-generated resource to the stream. It is assumed that before sending the initial stream header, the client has already resolved an SRV record of _xmpp-client._tcp.im.example.com and has opened a TCP connection to the advertised port at the resolved IP address.
Note: The alternate steps shown are provided only to illustrate the protocol for failure cases; they are not exhaustive and would not necessarily be triggered by the data sent in the examples.
| TOC |
Step 1: Client initiates stream to server:
C: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Step 2: Server responds by sending a response stream header to client:
S: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='t7AMCin9zjMNwQKDnplntZPIDEI='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
Step 3: Server sends stream features to client (STARTTLS extension only at this point):
S: <stream:features>
<starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'>
<required/>
</starttls>
</stream:features>
Step 4: Client sends STARTTLS command to server:
C: <starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
Step 5: Server informs client that it is allowed to proceed:
S: <proceed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
Step 5 (alt): Server informs client that TLS negotiation has failed and closes both XML stream and TCP connection:
S: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/> S: </stream:stream>
Step 6: Client and server attempt to complete TLS negotiation over the existing TCP connection (see [TLS] (Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” April 2006.) for details).
Step 7: If TLS negotiation is successful, client initiates a new stream to server:
C: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Step 7 (alt): If TLS negotiation is unsuccessful, server closes TCP connection.
| TOC |
Step 8: Server responds by sending a stream header to client along with any available stream features:
S: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='vgKi/bkYME8OAj4rlXMkpucAqe4='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
S: <stream:features>
<mechanisms xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<mechanism>DIGEST-MD5</mechanism>
<mechanism>PLAIN</mechanism>
<required/>
</mechanisms>
</stream:features>
Step 9: Client selects an authentication mechanism, in this case [DIGEST‑MD5] (Leach, P. and C. Newman, “Using Digest Authentication as a SASL Mechanism,” May 2000.) with an empty authorization identity ("="):
C: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='PLAIN'>R0m30R0cks</auth>
Step 10: Server informs client of success and includes [BASE64] (Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings,” October 2006.) encoded value for subsequent authentication:
S: <success xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
Step 10 (alt): Server returns error to client:
S: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<not-authorized/>
</failure>
Step 11: Client initiates a new stream to server:
C: <stream:stream
from='juliet@im.example.com'
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
| TOC |
Step 12: Server responds by sending a stream header to client along with supported features (in this case resource binding):
S: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
id='gPybzaOzBmaADgxKXu9UClbprp0='
to='juliet@im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xml:lang='en'
xmlns='jabber:client'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S: <stream:features>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<required/>
</bind>
<unbind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'/>
</stream:features>
Upon being so informed that resource binding is required, the client MUST bind a resource to the stream; here we assume that the client asks the server to generate a resource identifier on its behalf.
Step 13: Client binds a resource:
C: <iq id='bind_1' type='set'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'/>
</iq>
Step 14: Server generates resource identifier and informs client of successful resource binding:
S: <iq id='bind_1' type='result'>
<bind xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'>
<jid>
juliet@im.example.com/4db06f061ea411dcaca3000bcd821bfb
</jid>
</bind>
</iq>
| TOC |
Now the client is allowed to send XML stanzas over the negotiated stream.
C: <message
from='juliet@im.example.com/4db06f061ea411dcaca3000bcd821bfb'
to='romeo@example.net'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?</body>
</message>
If necessary, sender's server negotiates XML streams with intended recipient's server (see Section 10.2 (Server-to-Server Examples)).
The intended recipient replies and the message is delivered to the client.
E: <message
from='romeo@example.net/63a6be961ea411dca38b000bcd821cgc'
to='juliet@im.example.com/4db06f061ea411dcaca3000bcd821bfb'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.</body>
</message>
The client may send and receive an unbounded number of subsequent XML stanzas over the stream.
| TOC |
Desiring to send no further messages, the client closes the stream.
C: </stream:stream>
Consistent with the recommended stream closing handshake, server closes stream as well:
S: </stream:stream>
Client now terminates the underlying TCP connection.
| TOC |
The following examples show the data flow for a server negotiating an XML stream with another server, exchanging XML stanzas, and closing the negotiated stream. The initiating server ("Server1") is example.com; the receiving server ("Server2") is example.net and it requires use of TLS; example.com presents a certificate and authenticates via the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism. It is assumed that before sending the initial stream header, Server1 has already resolved an SRV record of _xmpp-server._tcp.example.net and has opened a TCP connection to the advertised port at the resolved IP address.
Note: The alternate steps shown are provided only to illustrate the protocol for failure cases; they are not exhaustive and would not necessarily be triggered by the data sent in the examples.
| TOC |
Step 1: Server1 initiates stream to Server2:
S1: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
to='example.net'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Step 2: Server2 responds by sending a response stream header to Server1:
S2: <stream:stream
from='example.net'
id='hTiXkW+ih9k2SqdGkk/AZi0OJ/Q='
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Step 3: Server2 sends stream features to Server1:
S2: <stream:features>
<starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'>
<required/>
</starttls>
</stream:features>
Step 4: Server1 sends the STARTTLS command to Server2:
S1: <starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
Step 5: Server2 informs Server1 that it is allowed to proceed:
S2: <proceed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
Step 5 (alt): Server2 informs Server1 that TLS negotiation has failed and closes stream:
S2: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/> S2: </stream:stream>
Step 6: Server1 and Server2 attempt to complete TLS negotiation via TCP.
Step 7: If TLS negotiation is successful, Server1 initiates a new stream to Server2:
S1: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
to='example.net'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Step 7 (alt): If TLS negotiation is unsuccessful, Server2 closes TCP connection.
| TOC |
Step 8: Server2 sends a response stream header to Server1 along with available stream features (including a preference for the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism):
S2: <stream:stream
from='example.net'
id='RChdjlgj/TIBcbT9Keu31zDihH4='
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S2: <stream:features>
<mechanisms xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<mechanism>EXTERNAL</mechanism>
<required/>
</mechanisms>
</stream:features>
Step 9: Server1 selects the EXTERNAL mechanism, in this case with an authorization identity encoded according to [BASE64] (Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings,” October 2006.):
S1: <auth xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
mechanism='EXTERNAL'/>eG1wcC5leGFtcGxlLmNvbQ</auth>
The decoded authorization identity is "im.example.com".
Step 10: Server2 determines that the authorization identity provided by Server1 matches the information in the presented certificate and therefore returns success:
S2: <success xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
Step 11 (alt): Server2 informs Server1 of failed authentication:
S2: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'>
<not-authorized/>
</failure>
S2: </stream:stream>
Step 12: Server1 initiates a new stream to Server2:
S1: <stream:stream
from='im.example.com'
to='example.net'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
Step 13: Server2 responds by sending a stream header to Server1 along with any additional features (or, in this case, an empty features element):
S2: <stream:stream
from='example.net'
id='MbbV2FeojySpUIP6J91qaa+TWHM='
to='im.example.com'
version='1.0'
xmlns='jabber:server'
xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
S2: <stream:features/>
| TOC |
Now Server1 is allowed to send XML stanzas to Server2 over the negotiated stream; here we assume that the transferred stanzas are those shown earlier for client-to-server communication.
Server1 sends XML stanza to Server2:
S1: <message from='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
to='romeo@example.net'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?</body>
</message>
The intended recipient replies and the message is delivered from Server2 to Server1.
Server2 sends XML stanza to Server1:
S2: <message from='romeo@example.net/orchard'
to='juliet@im.example.com/balcony'
xml:lang='en'>
<body>Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.</body>
</message>
| TOC |
Desiring to send no further messages, Server1 closes the stream. (In practice, the stream would most likely remain open for some time, since Server1 and Server2 do not immediately know if the stream will be needed for further communication.)
S1: </stream:stream>
Consistent with the recommended stream closing handshake, Server2 closes stream as well:
S2: </stream:stream>
Server1 now terminates the underlying TCP connection.
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An XMPP server MUST ensure in-order processing of XML stanzas between any two entities. This includes stanzas sent by a client to its server for direct processing by the server (e.g., in-order processing of a roster get and initial presence as described in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.)).
Beyond the requirement for in-order processing, each server implementation will contain its own logic for processing stanzas it receives. Such logic determines whether the server needs to ROUTE a given stanza to another domain, DELIVER it to a local entity (typically a connected client associated with a local account), or HANDLE it directly within the server itself. The following rules apply.
Note: Particular XMPP applications MAY specify delivery rules that modify or supplement the following rules; for example, a set of delivery rules for instant messaging and presence applications is defined in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.).
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If the stanza possesses no 'to' attribute, the server SHOULD handle it directly on behalf of the entity that sent it, where the meaning of "handle it directly" depends on whether the stanza is message, presence, or IQ. Because all stanzas received from other servers MUST possess a 'to' attribute, this rule applies only to stanzas received from a local entity (such as a client) that is connected to the server.
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If the server receives a message stanza with no 'to' attribute, it SHOULD treat the message as if the 'to' address were the bare JID <node@domain> of the sending entity.
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If the server receives a presence stanza with no 'to' attribute, it SHOULD broadcast it to the entities that are subscribed to the sending entity's presence, if applicable (the semantics of presence broadcast for presence applications are defined in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.)).
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If the server receives an IQ stanza with no 'to' attribute, it MUST process the stanza on behalf of the account from which received the stanza, as follows:
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If the hostname of the domain identifier portion of the JID contained in the 'to' attribute matches one of the configured hostnames of the server itself, the server MUST first determine if the hostname is serviced by the server or by a specialized local service. If the latter, the server MUST route the stanza to that service. If the former, the server MUST proceed as follows.
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If the JID contained in the 'to' attribute is of the form <domain>, then the server MUST either handle the stanza as appropriate for the stanza kind or return an error stanza to the sender.
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If the JID contained in the 'to' attribute is of the form <domain/resource>, then the server MUST either handle the stanza as appropriate for the stanza kind or return an error stanza to the sender.
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If the JID contained in the 'to' attribute is of the form <node@domain> (bare JID) or <node@domain/resource> (full JID), then the server SHOULD deliver the stanza to the intended recipient. The following rules apply:
Note: More detailed rules in the context of instant messaging and presence applications are provided in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.).
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If the hostname of the domain identifier portion of the JID contained in the 'to' attribute does not match one of the configured hostnames of the server itself, the server SHOULD attempt to route the stanza to the foreign domain (subject to local service provisioning and security policies regarding inter-domain communication, since such communication is optional for any given deployment). There are two possible cases.
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If a server-to-server stream already exists between the two domains, the sender's server shall attempt to route the stanza to the authoritative server for the foreign domain over the existing stream.
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If there exists no server-to-server stream between the two domains, the sender's server shall proceed as follows:
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If routing to the intended recipient's server is unsuccessful, the sender's server MUST return an error to the sender, which SHOULD be <remote-server-not-found/> if resolution of the foreign domain is unsuccessful and <remote-server-timeout/> if resolution succeeds but streams cannot be negotiated.
If stream negotiation with the intended recipient's server is successful but the foreign server cannot deliver the stanza to the recipient, the foreign server shall return an error to the sender by way of the sender's server.
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The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) defines a class of data objects called XML streams as well as the behavior of computer programs that process XML streams. XMPP is an application profile of the Extensible Markup Language [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.), and a complete XML stream (including start and end stream tags) is a conforming XML document.
However, XMPP does not deal with XML documents but with XML streams. Because XMPP does not require the parsing of arbitrary and complete XML documents, there is no requirement that XMPP needs to support the full feature set of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.). In particular, the following features of XML are prohibited in XMPP:
An XMPP implementation MUST behave as follow with regard to these features:
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XML namespaces (see [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.)) are used within XMPP streams to create strict boundaries of data ownership. The basic function of namespaces is to separate different vocabularies of XML elements that are structurally mixed together. Ensuring that XMPP streams are namespace-aware enables any allowable XML to be structurally mixed with any data element within XMPP. XMPP-specific rules for XML namespace names and prefixes are defined in the following subsections.
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A streams namespace declaration is REQUIRED in all XML stream headers and the name of the streams namespace MUST be 'http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'. If this rule is violated, the entity that receives the offending stream header MUST return a stream error to the sending entity, which SHOULD be <invalid-namespace/> but MAY be <bad-format/>.
The element names of the <stream/> element and its <features/> and <error/> children MUST be qualified by the streams namespace prefix in all instances. If this rule is violated, the entity that receives the offending element MUST return a stream error to the sending entity, which SHOULD be <bad-format/>.
An implementation SHOULD generate only the 'stream:' prefix for these elements, and for historical reasons MAY accept only the 'stream:' prefix. If an entity receives a stream header with a streams namespace prefix it does not accept, it MUST return a stream error to the sending entity, which SHOULD be <bad-namespace-prefix/> but MAY be <bad-format/>.
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A default namespace declaration is REQUIRED and defines the allowable first-level children of the root stream element. This namespace declaration MUST be the same for the initial stream and the response stream so that both streams are qualified consistently. The default namespace declaration applies to the stream and all first-level child element sent within a stream unless explicitly qualified by the streams namespace or another namespace).
A server implementation MUST support the following two default namespaces (for historical reasons, an implementation MAY support only these two default namespaces):
A client implementation MUST support the 'jabber:client' default namespace, and for historical reasons MAY support only that default namespace.
If an implementation accepts a stream that is qualified by the 'jabber:client' or 'jabber:server' namespace, it MUST support the common attributes (Common Attributes) and basic semantics (Basic Semantics) of all three core stanza types (message, presence, and IQ).
An implementation MUST NOT generate namespace prefixes for elements qualified by the default namespace if the default namespace is 'jabber:client' or 'jabber:server'.
Note: The 'jabber:client' and 'jabber:server' namespaces are nearly identical but are used in different contexts (client-to-server communication for 'jabber:client' and server-to-server communication for 'jabber:server'). The only difference between the two is that the 'to' and 'from' attributes are OPTIONAL on stanzas sent over XML streams qualified by the 'jabber:client' namespace, whereas they are REQUIRED on stanzas sent over XML streams qualified by the 'jabber:server' namespace.
An implementation MAY support a default namespace other than "jabber:client" or "jabber:server". However, because such namespaces would define applications other than XMPP, they are to be defined in separate specifications.
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An EXTENDED NAMESPACE is an XML namespace that qualifies extended content as defined under Section 9.4 (Extended Content). For example, in the following stanza, the extended namespace is 'jabber:iq:roster':
<iq from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'
id='roster1'
type='get'>
<query xmlns='jabber:iq:roster'/>
</iq>
An XML stanza MAY contain XML data qualified by more than one extended namespace, either at the direct child level of the stanza (for presence and message stanzas) or in any mix of levels (for all stanzas).
<presence from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'>
<c xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/caps'
node='http://exodus.jabberstudio.org/caps'
ver='0.9'/>
<x xmlns='vcard-temp:x:update'>
<photo>sha1-hash-of-image</photo>
</x>
</presence>
<message to='juliet@capulet.com'>
<body>Hello?</body>
<html xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/xhtml-im'>
<body xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p style='font-weight:bold'>Hello?</t>
</body>
</html>
</message>
<iq from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'
id='roster2'
type='get'>
<query xmlns='jabber:iq:roster'>
<headers xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/shim'>
<header name='If-None-Match'>some-long-opaque-string</header>
</headers>
</query>
</iq>
An implementation SHOULD NOT generate namespace prefixes for elements qualified by content (as opposed to stream) namespaces other than the default namespace. However, if included, the namespace declarations for those prefixes MUST be included on the stanza root or a child thereof, not at the level of the stream element (this helps to ensure that any such namespace declaration is routed and delivered with the stanza, instead of assumed from the stream).
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A XMPP entity MUST NOT accept XML data from another entity if that data is not well-formed in accordance with both the definition of "well-formed" in Section 2.1 of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.) and the definition of "namespace-well-formed" in Section 7 of [XML‑NAMES] (Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” January 1999.). In an XMPP entity receives XML data that is not so well-formed, it MUST return an <xml-not-well-formed/> stream error and close the stream over which the data was sent.
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A server is not responsible for ensuring that XML data delivered to a client or routed to another server is valid, in accordance with the definition of "valid" provided in Section 2.8 of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.). An implementation MAY choose to provide only validated data, but such behavior is OPTIONAL. A client SHOULD NOT rely on the ability to send data that does not conform to the schemas, and SHOULD ignore any non-conformant elements or attributes on the incoming XML stream.
Note: The terms "valid" and "well-formed" are distinct in XML.
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Implementations SHOULD send a text declaration before sending a stream header. Applications MUST follow the rules provided in [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.) regarding the circumstances under which a text declaration is included.
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Implementations MUST support the UTF-8 transformation of Universal Character Set [UCS2] (International Organization for Standardization, “Information Technology - Universal Multiple-octet coded Character Set (UCS) - Amendment 2: UCS Transformation Format 8 (UTF-8),” October 1996.) characters, as required by [CHARSET] (Alvestrand, H., “IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages,” January 1998.) and defined in [UTF‑8] (Yergeau, F., “UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646,” November 2003.). Implementations MUST NOT attempt to use any other encoding. If one party to an XML stream detects that the other party has attempted to send XML data with an encoding other than UTF-8, it MUST return a stream error, which SHOULD be <unsupported-encoding/>.
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Except where explicitly disallowed (e.g., during TLS negotiation (STARTTLS Negotiation) and SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation)), either entity MAY send white space characters (matching production [3] content of [XML] (Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” August 2006.)) within the root stream element as separators between XML stanzas or between any other first-level elements sent over the stream. One common use for sending such white space characters is explained under Section 5.6.3 (Handling of Idle Streams).
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This section summarizes the specific aspects of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol that MUST be supported by servers and clients in order to be considered compliant implementations, as well as additional protocol aspects that SHOULD be supported. For compliance purposes, we draw a distinction between core protocols (which MUST be supported by any server or client, regardless of the specific application) and instant messaging and presence protocols (which MUST be supported only by instant messaging and presence applications built on top of the core protocols). Compliance requirements that apply to all servers and clients are specified in this section; compliance requirements for instant messaging and presence applications are specified in the corresponding section of [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.).
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A server MUST support the following core protocols in order to be considered compliant:
For backward compatibility with the large deployed base of XMPP servers, server developers are advised to implement the server dialback protocol first specified in [RFC3920] (Saint-Andre, P., Ed., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core,” October 2004.) and now documented in [XEP‑0220] (Saint-Andre, P. and J. Miller, “Server Dialback,” July 2007.), since that protocol is widely used for weak identity verification of peer servers in the absence of domain certificates.
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A client MUST support the following core protocols in order to be considered compliant:
In addition, a client SHOULD support the following core protocols:
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As specified under Section 12.6 (Character Encoding), XML streams MUST be encoded in UTF-8.
As specified under Section 5.3 (Stream Attributes), an XML stream SHOULD include an 'xml:lang' attribute specifying the default language for any XML character data that is intended to be presented to a human user. As specified under Section 9.1.5 (xml:lang), an XML stanza SHOULD include an 'xml:lang' attribute if the stanza contains XML character data that is intended to be presented to a human user. A server SHOULD apply the default 'xml:lang' attribute to stanzas it routes or delivers on behalf of connected entities, and MUST NOT modify or delete 'xml:lang' attributes on stanzas it receives from other entities.
As specified under Section 3 (Addresses), a server MUST support and enforce [IDNA] (Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” March 2003.) for domain identifiers, the Nodeprep (Nodeprep) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) for node identifiers, and the Resourceprep (Resourceprep) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) for resource identifiers; this enables XMPP addresses to include a wide variety of Unicode characters outside the US-ASCII range.
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For the purposes of XMPP communication (client-to-server and server-to-server), the term "high security" refers to the use of security technologies that provide both mutual authentication and integrity checking; in particular, when using certificate-based authentication to provide high security, a chain-of-trust SHOULD be established out-of-band, although a shared certification authority signing certificates could allow a previously unknown certificate to establish trust in-band. See Section 15.2 (Certificates) regarding certificate validation procedures.
Implementations MUST support high security. Service provisioning should use high security, subject to local security policies.
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Channel encryption of an XML stream using Transport Layer Security as described under Section 6 (STARTTLS Negotiation), and in some cases also authentication as described under Section 7 (SASL Negotiation), is commonly based on a digital certificate presented by the receiving entity (or, in the case of mutual authentication, both the receiving entity and the initiating entity). This section describes best practices regarding the generation of digital certificates to be presented by XMPP entities and the verification of digital certificates presented by XMPP entities.
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In a digital certificate to be presented by an XMPP server or service (i.e., a SERVER CERTIFICATE), it is RECOMMENDED for the certificate to include one or more JIDs (i.e., domain identifiers) associated with domains serviced at the server. The representations described in the following sections are RECOMMENDED. These representations are described in preference order.
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A server's domain identifier SHOULD be represented as a service name, i.e., as an otherName field of type "id-on-dnsSRV" as specified in [X509‑SRV] (Santesson, S., “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Subject Alternative Name for Expression of Service Name,” August 2007.).
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A server's domain identifier SHOULD be represented as a DNS name, i.e., as a subjectAltName extension of type dNSName.
The DNS name MAY contain the wildcard character '*'. The wildcard character applies only to the left-most domain name component or component fragment and match any single component or component fragment. For instance, a DNS name of *.example.com matches foo.example.com but not bar.foo.example.com or example.com itself; similarly, a DNS name of im*.example.net matches im1.example.net and im2.example.net but not chat.example.net or example.net itself.
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A server's domain identifier MAY be represented as an XMPP OID, i.e., as a UTF8String within an otherName entity inside the subjectAltName, using the [ASN.1] (CCITT, “Recommendation X.208: Specification of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1),” 1988.) Object Identifier "id-on-xmppAddr" specified under Section 15.2.1.3 (ASN.1 Object Identifier). In server certificates, this representation is included for the sake of backward-compatibility.
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A server's domain identifier MUST NOT be represented as a Common Name; instead, the Common Name field MUST be reserved for representation of a human-friendly name.
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For our first (relatively simple) example, consider a company called "Example Products, Inc." It hosts an XMPP service at "im.example.com" (i.e., user addresses at the service are of the form "user@im.example.com"), and SRV lookups for the xmpp-client and xmpp-server services at "im.example.com" yield one machine, called "x.example.com", as follows:
_xmpp-client._tcp.im.example.com. 400 IN SRV 20 0 5222 x.example.com _xmpp-server._tcp.im.example.com. 400 IN SRV 20 0 5222 x.example.com
The certificate presented when connecting to x.example.com contains the following representations:
subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-dnsSRV:_xmpp-client.im.example.com subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-dnsSRV:_xmpp-server.im.example.com subjectAltName=dNSName:im.example.com subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-xmppAddr;UTF8:im.example.com CN=Example Products, Inc.
For our second (more complex) example, consider an ISP called "Example Internet Services". It hosts an XMPP service at "example.net" (i.e., user addresses at the service are of the form "user@example.net"), but SRV lookups for the xmpp-client and xmpp-server services at "example.net" yield two machines ("x1.example.net" and "x2.example.net") as follows:
_xmpp-client._tcp.example.net. 68400 IN SRV 20 0 5222 x1.example.net. _xmpp-client._tcp.example.net. 68400 IN SRV 20 0 5222 x2.example.net. _xmpp-server._tcp.example.net. 68400 IN SRV 20 0 5222 x1.example.net. _xmpp-server._tcp.example.net. 68400 IN SRV 20 0 5222 x2.example.net.
Example Internet Services also hosts chatrooms at chat.example.net, and provides SRV records for those services as well. It also may provide other such services in the future, so it wishes to represent a wildcard in its certificate to handle future growth.
The certificate presented when connecting to either x1.example.net or x2.example.net contains the following representations:
subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-dnsSRV:_xmpp-client.example.net subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-dnsSRV:_xmpp-client.chat.example.net subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-dnsSRV:_xmpp-server.example.net subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-dnsSRV:_xmpp-server.chat.example.net subjectAltName=dNSName:example.net subjectAltName=dNSName:*.example.net subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-xmppAddr;UTF8:example.net subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-xmppAddr;UTF8:chat.example.net CN=Example Internet Services
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In a digital certificate to be presented by an XMPP client controlled by a human user (i.e., a CLIENT CERTIFICATE), it is RECOMMENDED for the certificate to include one or more JIDs associated with an XMPP user. If included, a JID MUST be represented as an XMPP OID, i.e., as a UTF8String within an otherName entity inside the subjectAltName, using the [ASN.1] (CCITT, “Recommendation X.208: Specification of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1),” 1988.) Object Identifier "id-on-xmppAddr" specified under Section 15.2.1.3 (ASN.1 Object Identifier).
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The [ASN.1] (CCITT, “Recommendation X.208: Specification of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1),” 1988.) Object Identifier "id-on-xmppAddr" (also called an XMPP OID) is defined as follows.
id-pkix OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { iso(1) identified-organization(3)
dod(6) internet(1) security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) }
id-on OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-pkix 8 } -- other name forms
id-on-xmppAddr OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-on 5 }
XmppAddr ::= UTF8String
As an alternative to the "id-on-xmppAddr" notation, this Object Identifier MAY be represented in dotted display format (i.e., "1.3.6.1.5.5.7.8.5") or in the Uniform Resource Name notation specified in [URN‑OID] (Mealling, M., “A URN Namespace of Object Identifiers,” February 2001.) (i.e., "urn:oid:1.3.6.1.5.5.7.8.5").
Thus for example the JID "juliet@im.example.com" as included in a certificate could be formatted in any of the following three ways:
- id-on-xmppAddr:
- subjectAltName=otherName:id-on-xmppAddr;UTF8:juliet@im.example.com
- dotted display format:
- subjectAltName=otherName:1.3.6.1.5.5.7.8.5;UTF8:juliet@im.example.com
- URN notation:
- subjectAltName=otherName:urn:oid:1.3.6.1.5.5.7.8.5;UTF8:juliet@im.example.com
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When an XMPP entity is presented with a server certificate or client certificate by a peer for the purpose of encryption or authentication as described under Section 6 (STARTTLS Negotiation) and Section 7 (SASL Negotiation), the entity MUST validate the certificate in order to determine if the certificate shall be considered a TRUSTED CERTIFICATE, i.e., a certificate that is acceptable for encryption and authentication in accordance with the XMPP entity's local service policies or configured settings. The following rules apply.
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When an XMPP entity (client or server) validates a certificate presented by a server, there are three possible cases, as discussed in the following sections.
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If the server certificate appears to be certified by a chain of certificates terminating in a trust anchor (as described in Section 6.1 of [X509] (Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W., and D. Solo, “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile,” April 2002.)), the entity SHOULD check the certificate for any instances of the service name, DNS name, and XMPP OID (in that order of preference) as described under Section 15.2.1.1.1 (Service Name), Section 15.2.1.1.2 (DNS Name), and Section 15.2.1.1.3 (XMPP OID). There are three possible sub-cases:
- Sub-Case #1:
- The entity finds at least one service name, DNS name, or XMPP OID that matches the hostname to which it attempted to connect; the entity SHOULD use this represented domain identifier as the validated identity of the server. Note: the server certificate MUST be checked against the hostname as provided by the entity (client or server), not the hostname as resolved via the Domain Name System; e.g., if a user specifies a hostname of "example.net" but a [DNS‑SRV] (Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, “A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV),” February 2000.) lookup returns "xmpp.example.net", the certificate MUST be checked as "example.net". A user-oriented client MAY provide a configuration setting that enables a human user to explicitly specify a hostname to be checked for connection purposes.
- Sub-Case #2:
- The entity finds no service name, DNS name, or XMPP OID that matches the hostname to which it attempted to connect and a human user has not permanently accepted the certificate during a previous connection attempt; the entity MUST NOT use the represented domain identifier (if any) as the validated identity of the server. Instead, if the connecting entity is a user-oriented client then it MUST either (1) automatically terminate the connection with a bad certificate error or (2) show the certificate (including the entire certificate chain) to the user and give the user the choice of terminating the connecting or accepting the certificate temporarily (i.e., for this connection attempt only) or permanently (i.e., for all future connection attempts) and then continuing with the connection; if a user permanently accepts a certificate in this way, the client MUST cache the certificate (or some non-forgeable representation such as a hash) and in future connection attempts behave as in Sub-Case #3. If the connecting entity is a server or an automated client, the application SHOULD terminate the connection (with a bad certificate error) and log the error to an appropriate audit log; a server or automated client MAY provide a configuration setting that disables this check, but MUST provide a setting that enables the check.
- Sub-Case #3:
- The entity finds no service name, DNS name, or XMPP OID that matches the hostname to which it attempted to connect but a human user has permanently accepted the certificate during a previous connection attempt; the entity MUST in verify that the cached certificate was presented and MUST notify the user if the certificate has changed.
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If the server certificate is certified by a Certificate Authority not known to the entity, the entity MUST proceed as under Case #1, Sub-Case #2 or Case #1, Sub-Case #3 as appropriate.
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If the server certificate is self-signed, the entity MUST proceed as under Case #1, Sub-Case #2 or Case #1, Sub-Case #3 as appropriate.
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When a server validates a certificate presented by a client, there are three possible cases, as discussed in the following sections.
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If the client certificate appears to be certified by a chain of certificates terminating in a trust anchor (as described in Section 6.1 of [X509] (Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W., and D. Solo, “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile,” April 2002.)), the server SHOULD check the certificate for any instances of the XMPP OID as described under Section 15.2.1.3 (ASN.1 Object Identifier). There are three possible sub-cases:
- Sub-Case #1:
- The server finds one XMPP OID for which the domain identifier portion of the represented JID matches one of the configured hostnames of the server itself; the server SHOULD use this represented JID as the validated identity of the client.
- Sub-Case #2:
- The server finds more than one XMPP OID for which the domain identifier portion of the represented JID matches one of the configured hostnames of the server itself; the server SHOULD use one of these represented JIDs as the validated identity of the client, choosing among them according to local service policies.
- Sub-Case #3:
- The server finds no XMPP OIDs, or finds at least one XMPP OID but the domain identifier portion of the represented JID does not match one of the configured hostnames of the server itself; the server MUST NOT use the represented JID (if any) as the validated identity of the client and instead MUST either validate the identity the client using other means or inform the client that it is unvalidated by returning a bad certificate error and terminating the underlying TCP connection (including logging of the event to an appropriate audit log).
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If the client certificate is certified by a Certificate Authority not known to the server, the server MUST proceed as under Case #1, Sub-Case #3.
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If the client certificate is self-signed, the server MUST proceed as under Case #1, Sub-Case #3.
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A compliant client implementation MUST support both TLS and SASL for connections to a server.
The TLS protocol for encrypting XML streams (defined under Section 6 (STARTTLS Negotiation)) provides a reliable mechanism for helping to ensure the confidentiality and data integrity of data exchanged between two entities.
The SASL protocol for authenticating XML streams (defined under Section 7 (SASL Negotiation)) provides a reliable mechanism for validating that a client connecting to a server is who it claims to be.
Client-to-server communication MUST NOT proceed until the DNS hostname asserted by the server has been resolved as specified under Section 4 (TCP Binding). If there is a mismatch between the hostname to which a client attempted to connect (e.g., "example.net") and the hostname to which the client actually connects (e.g., "xmpp.example.net"), the client MUST warn a human user about the mismatch and the human user MUST approve the connection before the client proceeds; however, the client MAY also allow the user to add the presented hostname to a configured set of accepted hostnames in order to expedite future connections.
A client's IP address and method of access MUST NOT be made public by a server, nor are any connections other than the original server connection required. This helps to protect the client's server from direct attack or identification by third parties.
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A compliant server implementation MUST support both TLS and SASL for inter-domain communication.
Because service provisioning is a matter of policy, it is optional for any given domain to communicate with other domains, and server-to-server communication may be disabled by the administrator of any given deployment. If a particular domain enables inter-domain communication, it should enable high security.
Administrators may want to require use of SASL for server-to-server communication in order to ensure both authentication and confidentiality (e.g., on an organization's private network). Compliant implementations SHOULD support SASL for this purpose.
Server-to-server communication MUST NOT proceed until the DNS hostnames asserted by both servers have been resolved as specified under Section 4 (TCP Binding).
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The order of layers in which protocols MUST be stacked is:
The rationale for this order is that [TCP] (Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” September 1981.) is the base connection layer used by all of the protocols stacked on top of TCP, [TLS] (Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” April 2006.) is often provided at the operating system layer, [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.) is often provided at the application layer, and XMPP is the application itself.
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The SASL framework itself does not provide a method for binding SASL authentication to a security layer providing confidentiality and integrity protection that was negotiated at a lower layer. Such a binding is known as a "channel binding" (see [CHANNEL] (Williams, N., “On the Use of Channel Bindings to Secure Channels,” November 2007.)). Some SASL mechanisms provide channel bindings. However, if a SASL mechanism does not provide a channel binding, then the mechanism cannot provide a way to verify that the source and destination end points to which the lower layer's security is bound are equivalent to the end points that SASL is authenticating; furthermore, if the end points are not identical, then the lower layer's security cannot be trusted to protect data transmitted between the SASL-authenticated entities. In such a situation, a SASL security layer SHOULD be negotiated that effectively ignores the presence of the lower-layer security.
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At a minimum, all implementations MUST support the following mechanisms:
- for authentication only:
- the SASL [DIGEST‑MD5] (Leach, P. and C. Newman, “Using Digest Authentication as a SASL Mechanism,” May 2000.) mechanism
- for confidentiality only:
- TLS (using the TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA cipher)
- for both authentication and confidentiality:
- TLS plus the SASL [PLAIN] (Zeilenga, K., “The PLAIN Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) Mechanism,” August 2006.) mechanism for password-based authentication or TLS plus the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism (see Appendix A of [SASL] (Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” June 2006.)) for non-password-based authentication (using the TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA cipher supporting peer certificates)
Naturally, implementations MAY support other ciphers with TLS and MAY support other SASL mechanisms.
Note: The use of TLS plus SASL PLAIN replaces the SASL DIGEST-MD5 mechanism as XMPP's mandatory-to-implement password-based method for authentication and confidentiality. Implementations are encouraged to continue supporting the SASL DIGEST-MD5 mechanism as specified in [DIGEST‑MD5] (Leach, P. and C. Newman, “Using Digest Authentication as a SASL Mechanism,” May 2000.).
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Communication using XMPP normally occurs over TCP connections on port 5222 (client-to-server) or port 5269 (server-to-server), as registered with the IANA (see Section 16 (IANA Considerations)). Use of these well-known ports allows administrators to easily enable or disable XMPP activity through existing and commonly-deployed firewalls.
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Both the client and the server MUST verify any base64 data received during SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation). An implementation MUST reject (not ignore) any characters that are not explicitly allowed by the base64 alphabet; this helps to guard against creation of a covert channel that could be used to "leak" information. An implementation MUST NOT break on invalid input and MUST reject any sequence of base64 characters containing the pad ('=') character if that character is included as something other than the last character of the data (e.g., "=AAA" or "BBBB=CCC"); this helps to guard against buffer overflow attacks and other attacks on the implementation. While base 64 encoding visually hides otherwise easily recognized information (such as passwords), it does not provide any computational confidentiality. All uses of base 64 encoding MUST follow the definition in Section 4 of [BASE64] (Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings,” October 2006.) and padding bits MUST be set to zero.
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XMPP makes use of the [NAMEPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),” March 2003.) profile of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.) for processing of domain identifiers; for security considerations related to Nameprep, refer to the appropriate section of [NAMEPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),” March 2003.).
In addition, XMPP defines two profiles of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.): Nodeprep (Nodeprep) for node identifiers and Resourceprep (Resourceprep) for resource identifiers.
The Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 repertoires have many characters that look similar. In many cases, users of security protocols might do visual matching, such as when comparing the names of trusted third parties. Because it is impossible to map similar-looking characters without a great deal of context (such as knowing the fonts used) stringprep does nothing to map similar-looking characters together, nor to prohibit some characters because they look like others.
A node identifier can be employed as one part of an entity's address in XMPP. One common usage is as the username of an instant messaging user; another is as the name of a multi-user conference room; many other kinds of entities could use node identifiers as part of their addresses. The security of such services could be compromised based on different interpretations of the internationalized node identifier; for example, a user entering a single internationalized node identifier could access another user's account information, or a user could gain access to a hidden or otherwise restricted chat room or service.
A resource identifier can be employed as one part of an entity's address in XMPP. One common usage is as the name for an instant messaging user's connected resource; another is as the nickname of a user in a multi-user conference room; many other kinds of entities could use resource identifiers as part of their addresses. The security of such services could be compromised based on different interpretations of the internationalized resource identifier; for example, a user could attempt to initiate multiple connections with the same name, or a user could send a message to someone other than the intended recipient in a multi-user conference room.
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As discussed in [XEP‑0165] (Saint-Andre, P., “Best Practices to Prevent JID Mimicking,” July 2007.), there are two forms of address spoofing: forging and mimicking.
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In the context of XMPP technologies, address forging occurs when an entity is able to generate an XML stanza whose 'from' address does not correspond to the account credentials with which the entity authenticated onto the network (or an authorization identity provided during SASL negotiation (SASL Negotiation)). For example, address forging occurs if an entity that authenticated as "juliet@im.example.com" is able to send XML stanzas from "nurse@im.example.com" or "romeo@example.net".
Address forging is difficult in XMPP systems, given the requirement for sending servers to stamp 'from' addresses and for receiving servers to verify sending domains via server-to-server authentication. However, address forging is not impossible, since a rogue server could forge JIDs at the sending domain by ignoring the stamping requirement. A rogue server could even forge JIDs at other domains by means of a DNS poisoning attack if [DNSSEC] (Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, “DNS Security Introduction and Requirements,” March 2005.) is not used. This specification does not define methods for discovering or counteracting such rogue servers.
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Address mimicking occus when an entity provides legitimate authentication credentials for and sends XML stanzas from an account whose JID appears to a human user to be the same as another JID. For example, in some XMPP clients the address "paypa1@example.org" (spelled with the number one as the final character of the node identifier) may appear to be the same as "paypal@example.org (spelled with the lower-case version of the letter "L"), especially on casual visual inspection; this phenomenon is sometimes called "typejacking". A more sophisticated example of address mimicking might involve the use of characters from outside the US-ASCII range, such as the Cherokee characters U+13DA U+13A2 U+13B5 U+13AC U+13A2 U+13AC U+13D2 instead of the US-ASCII characters "STPETER".
In some examples of address mimicking, it is unlikely that the average user could tell the difference between the real JID and the fake JID. (Naturally, there is no way to distinguish with full certainty which is the fake JID and which is the real JID; in some communication contexts, the JID with Cherokee characters may be the real JID and the JID with US-ASCII characters may thus appear to be the fake JID.) Because JIDs can contain almost any Unicode character, it may be relatively easy to mimic some JIDs in XMPP systems. The possibility of address mimicking introduces security vulnerabilities of the kind that have also plagued the World Wide Web, specifically the phenomenon known as phishing.
Mimicked addresses that involve characters from only one character set or from the character set typically employed by a particular user are not easy to combat (e.g., the simple typejacking attack previously described, which relies on a surface similarity between the characters "1" and "l" in some presentations). However, mimicked addresses that involve characters from more than one character set, or from a character set not typically employed by a particular user, can be mitigated somewhat through intelligent presentation. In particular, every human user of an XMPP technology presumably has a preferred language (or, in some cases, a small set of preferred languages), which an XMPP application SHOULD gather either explicitly from the user or implicitly via the operating system of the user's device. Furthermore, every language has a range (or a small set of ranges) of characters normally used to represent that language in textual form. Therefore, an XMPP application SHOULD warn the user when presenting a JID that uses characters outside the normal range of the user's preferred language(s). This recommendation is not intended to discourage communication across language communities; instead, it recognizes the existence of such language communities and encourages due caution when presenting unfamiliar character sets to human users.
For more detailed recommendations regarding prevention of address mimicking in XMPP systems, refer to [XEP‑0165] (Saint-Andre, P., “Best Practices to Prevent JID Mimicking,” July 2007.).
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[DOS] (Handley, M., Rescorla, E., and IAB, “Internet Denial-of-Service Considerations,” December 2006.) defines denial of service as follows:
- A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is an attack in which one or more machines target a victim and attempt to prevent the victim from doing useful work. The victim can be a network server, client or router, a network link or an entire network, an individual Internet user or a company doing business using the Internet, an Internet Service Provider (ISP), country, or any combination of or variant on these.
[XEP‑0205] (Saint-Andre, P., “Best Practices to Discourage Denial of Service Attacks,” July 2007.) provides a detailed discussion of potential denial of service attacks against XMPP systems and best practices for preventing such attacks. The recommendations include:
For more detailed recommendations regarding denial of service attacks in XMPP systems, refer to [XEP‑0205] (Saint-Andre, P., “Best Practices to Discourage Denial of Service Attacks,” July 2007.).
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One of the core aspects of XMPP is presence, i.e., widespread information about the network availability of XMPP entities. Although presence is discussed more fully in [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.), it is important to note that an XMPP server MUST NOT disclose an entity's presence to entities that are not authorized to know that information (such a disclosure is called a PRESENCE LEAK). In particular at the core XMPP level, real-time addressing and network availability is associated with a specific connected resource; therefore, any disclosure of a connected resource's full JID comprises a presence leak. To help prevent such a presence leak, a server MUST NOT return different stanza errors if a potential attacker sends XML stanzas to the entity's bare JID (<node@domain>) or full JID (<node@domain/resource>).
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To help prevent directory harvesting attacks, a server MUST NOT return different stanza errors if a potential attacker sends XML stanzas to an existing entity or a nonexistent entity. The stanza error returned in both cases SHOULD be <service-unavailable/>.
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The following sections update the registrations provided in [RFC3920] (Saint-Andre, P., Ed., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core,” October 2004.).
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A URN sub-namespace for STARTTLS negotiation data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined as follows. (This namespace name adheres to the format defined in [XML‑REG] (Mealling, M., “The IETF XML Registry,” January 2004.).)
- URI:
- urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls
- Specification:
- XXXX
- Description:
- This is the XML namespace name for STARTTLS negotiation data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as defined by XXXX.
- Registrant Contact:
- IETF, XMPP Working Group, <xmppwg@xmpp.org>
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A URN sub-namespace for SASL negotiation data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined as follows. (This namespace name adheres to the format defined in [XML‑REG] (Mealling, M., “The IETF XML Registry,” January 2004.).)
- URI:
- urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl
- Specification:
- XXXX
- Description:
- This is the XML namespace name for SASL negotiation data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as defined by XXXX.
- Registrant Contact:
- IETF, XMPP Working Group, <xmppwg@xmpp.org>
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A URN sub-namespace for stream error data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined as follows. (This namespace name adheres to the format defined in [XML‑REG] (Mealling, M., “The IETF XML Registry,” January 2004.).)
- URI:
- urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams
- Specification:
- XXXX
- Description:
- This is the XML namespace name for stream error data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as defined by XXXX.
- Registrant Contact:
- IETF, XMPP Working Group, <xmppwg@xmpp.org>
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A URN sub-namespace for resource binding in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined as follows. (This namespace name adheres to the format defined in [XML‑REG] (Mealling, M., “The IETF XML Registry,” January 2004.).)
- URI:
- urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind
- Specification:
- XXXX
- Description:
- This is the XML namespace name for resource binding in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as defined by XXXX.
- Registrant Contact:
- IETF, XMPP Working Group, <xmppwg@xmpp.org>
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A URN sub-namespace for stanza error data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined as follows. (This namespace name adheres to the format defined in [XML‑REG] (Mealling, M., “The IETF XML Registry,” January 2004.).)
- URI:
- urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas
- Specification:
- XXXX
- Description:
- This is the XML namespace name for stanza error data in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as defined by XXXX.
- Registrant Contact:
- IETF, XMPP Working Group, <xmppwg@xmpp.org>
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The Nodeprep profile of stringprep is defined under Nodeprep (Nodeprep). The IANA has registered Nodeprep in the stringprep profile registry.
Name of this profile:
- Nodeprep
RFC in which the profile is defined:
- XXXX
Indicator whether or not this is the newest version of the profile:
- This is the first version of Nodeprep
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The Resourceprep profile of stringprep is defined under Resourceprep (Resourceprep). The IANA has registered Resourceprep in the stringprep profile registry.
Name of this profile:
- Resourceprep
RFC in which the profile is defined:
- XXXX
Indicator whether or not this is the newest version of the profile:
- This is the first version of Resourceprep
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The IANA has registered "xmpp" as a GSSAPI (Linn, J., “Generic Security Service Application Program Interface Version 2, Update 1,” January 2000.) [GSS‑API] service name, as defined under Section 7.4 (SASL Definition).
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The IANA has registered "xmpp-client" and "xmpp-server" as keywords for [TCP] (Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” September 1981.) ports 5222 and 5269 respectively.
These ports SHOULD be used for client-to-server and server-to-server communications respectively, but other ports MAY be used.
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| [ABNF] | Crocker, D. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF,” RFC 4234, October 2005 (TXT). |
| [BASE64] | Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings,” RFC 4648, October 2006 (TXT). |
| [CHARSET] | Alvestrand, H., “IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages,” BCP 18, RFC 2277, January 1998 (TXT, HTML, XML). |
| [DIGEST-MD5] | Leach, P. and C. Newman, “Using Digest Authentication as a SASL Mechanism,” RFC 2831, May 2000 (TXT). |
| [DNS-SRV] | Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, “A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV),” RFC 2782, February 2000 (TXT). |
| [DNS] | Mockapetris, P., “Domain names - implementation and specification,” STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987 (TXT). |
| [IDNA] | Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” RFC 3490, March 2003 (TXT). |
| [IPv6] | Hinden, R. and S. Deering, “IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture,” RFC 4291, February 2006 (TXT). |
| [LANGTAGS] | Phillips, A. and M. Davis, “Tags for Identifying Languages,” BCP 47, RFC 4646, September 2006 (TXT). |
| [NAMEPREP] | Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),” RFC 3491, March 2003 (TXT). |
| [PLAIN] | Zeilenga, K., “The PLAIN Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) Mechanism,” RFC 4616, August 2006 (TXT). |
| [RANDOM] | Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, “Randomness Requirements for Security,” BCP 106, RFC 4086, June 2005 (TXT). |
| [RFC2373] | Hinden, R. and S. Deering, “IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture,” RFC 2373, July 1998 (TXT, XML). |
| [SASL] | Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, “Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL),” RFC 4422, June 2006 (TXT). |
| [STRINGPREP] | Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” RFC 3454, December 2002 (TXT). |
| [TCP] | Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol,” STD 7, RFC 793, September 1981 (TXT). |
| [TERMS] | Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 (TXT, HTML, XML). |
| [TLS] | Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” RFC 4346, April 2006 (TXT). |
| [UCS2] | International Organization for Standardization, “Information Technology - Universal Multiple-octet coded Character Set (UCS) - Amendment 2: UCS Transformation Format 8 (UTF-8),” ISO Standard 10646-1 Addendum 2, October 1996. |
| [UNICODE] | The Unicode Consortium, “The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0,” 2000. The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0 is defined by The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 (Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 2000. ISBN 0-201-61633-5), as amended by the Unicode Standard Annex #27: Unicode 3.1 (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr27/) and by the Unicode Standard Annex #28: Unicode 3.2 (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/). |
| [UTF-8] | Yergeau, F., “UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646,” STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003 (TXT). |
| [UUID] | Leach, P., Mealling, M., and R. Salz, “A Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace,” RFC 4122, July 2005 (TXT, HTML, XML). |
| [X509] | Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W., and D. Solo, “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile,” RFC 3280, April 2002 (TXT). |
| [X509-SRV] | Santesson, S., “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Subject Alternative Name for Expression of Service Name,” RFC 4985, August 2007 (TXT). |
| [XML] | Paoli, J., Maler, E., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Yergeau, F., and T. Bray, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition),” World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml-20060816, August 2006 (HTML). |
| [XML-NAMES] | Bray, T., Hollander, D., and A. Layman, “Namespaces in XML,” W3C REC-xml-names, January 1999. |
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This appendix defines the "Nodeprep" profile of stringprep. As such, it specifies processing rules that will enable users to enter internationalized node identifiers in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) and have the highest chance of getting the content of the strings correct. (An XMPP node identifier is the optional portion of an XMPP address that precedes an XMPP domain identifier and the '@' separator; it is often but not exclusively associated with an instant messaging username.) These processing rules are intended only for XMPP node identifiers and are not intended for arbitrary text or any other aspect of an XMPP address.
This profile defines the following, as required by [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.):
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This profile uses Unicode 3.2 with the list of unassigned code points being Table A.1, both defined in Appendix A of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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This profile specifies mapping using the following tables from [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.):
- Table B.1
- Table B.2
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This profile specifies the use of Unicode normalization form KC, as described in [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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This profile specifies the prohibition of using the following tables from [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
- Table C.1.1
- Table C.1.2
- Table C.2.1
- Table C.2.2
- Table C.3
- Table C.4
- Table C.5
- Table C.6
- Table C.7
- Table C.8
- Table C.9
In addition, the following Unicode characters are also prohibited:
- #x22 (QUOTATION MARK)
- #x26 (AMPERSAND)
- #x27 (APOSTROPHE)
- #x2F (SOLIDUS)
- #x3A (COLON)
- #x3C (LESS-THAN SIGN)
- #x3E (GREATER-THAN SIGN)
- #x40 (COMMERCIAL AT)
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This profile specifies checking bidirectional strings, as described in Section 6 of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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This appendix defines the "Resourceprep" profile of stringprep. As such, it specifies processing rules that will enable users to enter internationalized resource identifiers in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) and have the highest chance of getting the content of the strings correct. (An XMPP resource identifier is the optional portion of an XMPP address that follows an XMPP domain identifier and the '/' separator.) These processing rules are intended only for XMPP resource identifiers and are not intended for arbitrary text or any other aspect of an XMPP address.
This profile defines the following, as required by [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.):
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This profile uses Unicode 3.2 with the list of unassigned code points being Table A.1, both defined in Appendix A of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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This profile specifies mapping using the following tables from [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.):
- Table B.1
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This profile specifies the use of Unicode normalization form KC, as described in [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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This profile specifies the prohibition of using the following tables from [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
- Table C.1.2
- Table C.2.1
- Table C.2.2
- Table C.3
- Table C.4
- Table C.5
- Table C.6
- Table C.7
- Table C.8
- Table C.9
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This profile specifies checking bidirectional strings, as described in Section 6 of [STRINGPREP] (Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, “Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep"),” December 2002.).
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Because validation of XML streams and stanzas is optional, the following XML schemas are provided for descriptive purposes only. These schemas are not normative.
The following schemas formally define various XML namespaces used in the core XMPP protocols, in conformance with [XML‑SCHEMA] (Thompson, H., Maloney, M., Mendelsohn, N., and D. Beech, “XML Schema Part 1: Structures Second Edition,” October 2004.). For schemas defining the 'jabber:client' and 'jabber:server' namespaces, refer to [XMPP‑IM] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” July 2007.).
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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<xs:schema
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
targetNamespace='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
xmlns='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'
elementFormDefault='unqualified'>
<xs:import namespace='jabber:client'/>
<xs:import namespace='jabber:server'/>
<xs:import namespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'/>
<xs:import namespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'/>
<xs:import namespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/>
<xs:import namespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/>
<xs:element name='stream'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence xmlns:client='jabber:client'
xmlns:server='jabber:server'>
<xs:element ref='features' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='1'/>
<xs:any namespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='unbounded'/>
<xs:any namespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='unbounded'/>
<xs:choice minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='1'>
<xs:choice minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'>
<xs:element ref='client:message'/>
<xs:element ref='client:presence'/>
<xs:element ref='client:iq'/>
</xs:choice>
<xs:choice minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'>
<xs:element ref='server:message'/>
<xs:element ref='server:presence'/>
<xs:element ref='server:iq'/>
<xs:element ref='db:result'/>
<xs:element ref='db:verify'/>
</xs:choice>
</xs:choice>
<xs:element ref='error' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='1'/>
</xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name='from' type='xs:string' use='optional'/>
<xs:attribute name='id' type='xs:string' use='optional'/>
<xs:attribute name='to' type='xs:string' use='optional'/>
<xs:attribute name='version' type='xs:decimal' use='optional'/>
<xs:attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='features'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:any namespace='##other'/>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='error'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence xmlns:err='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'>
<xs:group ref='err:streamErrorGroup'/>
<xs:element ref='err:text'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='1'/>
<xs:any namespace='##other'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='1'/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>
| TOC |
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<xs:schema
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
targetNamespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'
elementFormDefault='qualified'>
<xs:element name='bad-format' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='bad-namespace-prefix' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='conflict' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='connection-timeout' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='host-gone' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='host-unknown' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='improper-addressing' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='internal-server-error' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='invalid-from' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='invalid-id' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='invalid-namespace' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='invalid-xml' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='not-authorized' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='policy-violation' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='remote-connection-failed' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='resource-constraint' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='restricted-xml' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='see-other-host' type='xs:string'/>
<xs:element name='system-shutdown' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='undefined-condition' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='unsupported-encoding' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='unsupported-stanza-type' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='unsupported-version' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='xml-not-well-formed' type='empty'/>
<xs:group name='streamErrorGroup'>
<xs:choice>
<xs:element ref='bad-format'/>
<xs:element ref='bad-namespace-prefix'/>
<xs:element ref='conflict'/>
<xs:element ref='connection-timeout'/>
<xs:element ref='host-gone'/>
<xs:element ref='host-unknown'/>
<xs:element ref='improper-addressing'/>
<xs:element ref='internal-server-error'/>
<xs:element ref='invalid-from'/>
<xs:element ref='invalid-id'/>
<xs:element ref='invalid-namespace'/>
<xs:element ref='invalid-xml'/>
<xs:element ref='not-authorized'/>
<xs:element ref='policy-violation'/>
<xs:element ref='remote-connection-failed'/>
<xs:element ref='resource-constraint'/>
<xs:element ref='restricted-xml'/>
<xs:element ref='see-other-host'/>
<xs:element ref='system-shutdown'/>
<xs:element ref='undefined-condition'/>
<xs:element ref='unsupported-encoding'/>
<xs:element ref='unsupported-stanza-type'/>
<xs:element ref='unsupported-version'/>
<xs:element ref='xml-not-well-formed'/>
</xs:choice>
</xs:group>
<xs:element name='text'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base='xs:string'>
<xs:attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:simpleType name='empty'>
<xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
<xs:enumeration value=''/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
</xs:schema>
| TOC |
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<xs:schema
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
targetNamespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'
elementFormDefault='qualified'>
<xs:element name='starttls'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name='required'
minOccurs='0'
type='empty'/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='proceed' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='failure' type='empty'/>
<xs:simpleType name='empty'>
<xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
<xs:enumeration value=''/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
</xs:schema>
| TOC |
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<xs:schema
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
targetNamespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'
elementFormDefault='qualified'>
<xs:element name='mechanisms'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name='mechanism'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='unbounded'
type='xs:NMTOKEN'/>
<xs:element name='required'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='1'
type='empty'/>
<xs:any namespace='##other'
minOccurs='0'
minOccurs='unbounded'/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='auth'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base='xs:string'>
<xs:attribute name='mechanism'
type='xs:NMTOKEN'
use='optional'/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='abort' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='challenge' type='xs:string'/>
<xs:element name='response' type='xs:string'/>
<xs:element name='success' type='xs:string'/>
<xs:element name='failure'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:choice minOccurs='0'>
<xs:element name='aborted' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='account-disabled' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='credentials-expired' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='encryption-required' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='incorrect-encoding' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='invalid-authzid' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='invalid-mechanism' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='malformed-request' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='mechanism-too-weak' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='not-authorized' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='temporary-auth-failure' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='transition-needed' type='empty'/>
</xs:choice>
<xs:element ref='text' minOccurs='0'/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='text'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base='xs:string'>
<xs:attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:simpleType name='empty'>
<xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
<xs:enumeration value=''/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
</xs:schema>
| TOC |
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<xs:schema
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
targetNamespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-bind'
elementFormDefault='qualified'>
<xs:element name='bind'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:choice minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='1'>
<xs:element name='resource' type='resourceType'/>
<xs:element name='jid' type='fullJIDType'/>
</xs:choice>
<xs:element name='required'
minOccurs='0'
maxOccurs='1'
type='empty'/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name='unbind'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence minOccurs='0'>
<xs:element name='resource' type='resourceType'/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:simpleType name='resourceType'>
<xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
<xs:minLength value='1'/>
<xs:maxLength value='1023'/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
<xs:simpleType name='fullJIDType'>
<xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
<xs:minLength value='8'/>
<xs:maxLength value='3071'/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
</xs:schema>
| TOC |
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<xs:schema
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
targetNamespace='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'
xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-stanzas'
elementFormDefault='qualified'>
<xs:element name='bad-request' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='conflict' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='feature-not-implemented' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='forbidden' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='gone' type='xs:string'/>
<xs:element name='internal-server-error' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='item-not-found' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='jid-malformed' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='not-acceptable' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='not-allowed' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='not-modified' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='payment-required' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='recipient-unavailable' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='redirect' type='xs:string'/>
<xs:element name='registration-required' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='remote-server-not-found' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='remote-server-timeout' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='resource-constraint' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='service-unavailable' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='subscription-required' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='undefined-condition' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='unexpected-request' type='empty'/>
<xs:element name='unknown-sender' type='empty'/>
<xs:group name='stanzaErrorGroup'>
<xs:choice>
<xs:element ref='bad-request'/>
<xs:element ref='conflict'/>
<xs:element ref='feature-not-implemented'/>
<xs:element ref='forbidden'/>
<xs:element ref='gone'/>
<xs:element ref='internal-server-error'/>
<xs:element ref='item-not-found'/>
<xs:element ref='jid-malformed'/>
<xs:element ref='not-acceptable'/>
<xs:element ref='not-authorized'/>
<xs:element ref='not-allowed'/>
<xs:element ref='not-modified'/>
<xs:element ref='payment-required'/>
<xs:element ref='recipient-unavailable'/>
<xs:element ref='redirect'/>
<xs:element ref='registration-required'/>
<xs:element ref='remote-server-not-found'/>
<xs:element ref='remote-server-timeout'/>
<xs:element ref='resource-constraint'/>
<xs:element ref='service-unavailable'/>
<xs:element ref='subscription-required'/>
<xs:element ref='undefined-condition'/>
<xs:element ref='unexpected-request'/>
<xs:element ref='unknown-sender'/>
</xs:choice>
</xs:group>
<xs:element name='text'>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base='xs:string'>
<xs:attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:simpleType name='empty'>
<xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
<xs:enumeration value=''/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
</xs:schema>
| TOC |
Consistent with [MAILBOXES] (Crocker, D., “MAILBOX NAMES FOR COMMON SERVICES, ROLES AND FUNCTIONS,” May 1997.), an organization that offers an XMPP service should provide an Internet mailbox of "XMPP" for inquiries related to that service, where the host portion of the resulting mailto URI should be the organization's domain, not necessarily the domain of the XMPP service itself (e.g., the XMPP service might be offered at im.example.com but the Internet mailbox should be <im.example.com>).
In addition, the XMPP service should provide a way to discover the XMPP contact address(es) of the service administrator(s), as specified in [XEP‑0157] (Saint-Andre, P. and J. Konieczny, “Contact Addresses for XMPP Services,” January 2007.).
| TOC |
Account provisioning is out of scope for this specification. Possible methods for account provisioning include account creation by a server administrator and in-band account registration using the 'jabber:iq:register' namespace as documented in [XEP‑0077] (Saint-Andre, P., “In-Band Registration,” January 2006.).
| TOC |
Based on consensus derived from implementation and deployment experience as well as formal interoperability testing, the following substantive modifications were made from RFC 3920.
In addition, numerous changes of an editorial nature were made in order to more fully specify and clearly explain XMPP.
| TOC |
Regarding this entire document or any portion of it, the author makes no guarantees and is not responsible for any damage resulting from its use. The author grants irrevocable permission to anyone to use, modify, and distribute it in any way that does not diminish the rights of anyone else to use, modify, and distribute it, provided that redistributed derivative works do not contain misleading author or version information. Derivative works need not be licensed under similar terms.
| TOC |
| TOC |
| Peter Saint-Andre (editor) | |
| XMPP Standards Foundation | |
| Email: | stpeter@jabber.org |
| URI: | https://stpeter.im/ |
| TOC |
Copyright © The IETF Trust (2008).
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