What are rosters, in the Jabber SDK?

[matthew.sreeves]

We need to create a presence-enabled corporate directory application, embedded into Finesse via a gadget.

It looks like vanilla Finesse doesn't have any presence capability, so we need to build it in. (Finesse appears to have a rudimentary phone book, but it's restricted to 1500 contacts and it's not presence-enabled, as far as I can tell).

Whilst exploring what the Jabber SDK can do, I've come across the concept of "rosters". However, it's not clear to me as to what these are.

Is this a global list of contacts? Or individual list for each user? Where is the list of contacts obtained from? From the CUP presence server? Would it be possible to add other contacts external to the organisation (obviously these would not have presence)?

If we need to hold our own directory database, how would we get presence information displayed next to each entry when it's shown to the user?

Thanks

[npetrele]

A roster isn't a global list for all users.  A roster is the user's personal list of contacts.  This list is stored at the server, so it will be the same regardless of which client the user uses to connect to Jabber.

The Jabber SDK (CAXL) also gives you the ability to add quick contacts (a list of contacts available for the session).  Perhaps you could write your Jabber web application to add the Finesse contacts as quick contacts.

You can use CAXL to get presence information for a given contact.  How you display it is up to your programming ingenuity.

[matthew.sreeves]

Thanks. So that confirms that we'll need to keep our own global list of contacts, accessible to each user.

Let's say a user performs a search on the global directory, and is presented with a dozen contacts. How would we get the presence information for each of those? Would we store the JID with each contact, and then perform some API call on that JID to get its presence?

Thanks

[npetrele · Accepted solution]

Yes, that's correct.  You'd do a getPrimaryPresence on the contact. 

[matthew.sreeves]

Great - thanks for your help.