It's often desirable to encode a reference to another entity within a chat message and to mark up the reference. Examples of this include HTTP URLs, 'mentions' (referring to another user), references to previous messages and references to Form Discovery and Publishing (XEP-0346) [1] (FDP) forms. This document provides a mechanism for marking up a section of a message body with information about the target of the reference.
If a client implements references, it MUST specify the 'urn:xmpp:reference:0' feature in its service discovery information features as specified in Service Discovery (XEP-0030) [2] and the Entity Capabilities profile specified in Entity Capabilities (XEP-0115) [3].
<iq type='get'
id='disco1'
from='romeo@montegue.lit/30d3d8'
to='juliet@capulet.lit/sabo239'>
<query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info'/>
</iq>
<iq type='result'
id='disco1'
from='juliet@capulet.lit/sabo239'
to='romeo@montegue.lit/30d3d8'>
<query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info'>
...
<feature var='urn:xmpp:reference:0'/>
...
</query>
</iq>
TODO: Individual discovery of reference types - FDP, Mentions, ...
References are provided in a 'reference' element of a message, with a namespace of 'urn:xmpp:reference:0'. The element MUST contain a 'type' attribute denoting the type of the reference and a 'uri' attribute of the thing that is referenced. It MAY contain 'begin', 'end' and 'anchor' elements.
The 'begin' and 'end' attributes are indexes denoting the beginning and end of the referenced substring in the message body. The Dijkstra convention of ranges [4] is used, which means that 'begin' is inclusive and 'end' is exclusive. In other words, the 'begin' attribute is the index of the first character (TODO: define character appropriately) in the referenced substring, with 0 being the index of the first character in the body, and the 'end' attribute is one higher than the index of the last character in the substring. This convention has three main advantages. It matches subsequence indexing in various programming languages, 'end' minus 'begin' equals the length of the substring, and when two substrings are adjacent, the 'end' attribute of the first one matches the 'begin' attribute of the second one. Where the reference is not a substring of the message body in the referring stanza, 'begin' and 'end' are not used.
An 'anchor' attribute is used when the referring message is not the one containing the reference element, and points to the previous message containing the reference (the referring message).
Note that the URIs of the reference and anchor do not need to refer to the same mechanism as that in which the reference was received. E.g., a service could listen for mentions in a MIX channels of users outside that channel, and send them messages containing a reference to let them know that they've been mentioned.
Mentions are a reference to a user's bare JID, and have a type of 'mention'.
<message type='groupchat'
id='sotehu-bthbtp32h3'
to='balcony@channels.shakespeare.lit'>
<body>But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.</body>
<reference xmlns='urn:xmpp:reference:0'
begin='72'
end='78'
type='mention'
uri='xmpp:juliet@capulet.lit'/>
</message>
Data references are a generic reference without additional information. The URI points to an 'item' that is able to be fetched. This is useful for, for example, fetching an item from pubsub, as in the example below. TODO: check URI syntax for refering to a pubsub item.
<message type='groupchat'
id='sotehu-bthbtp32h4'
from='balcony@channels.shakespeare.lit'
to='romeo@montegue.lit/30d3d8'>
<body>Form received</body>
<reference xmlns='urn:xmpp:reference:0'
type='data'
uri='xmpp:fdp.shakespeare.lit?;node=fdp/submitted/stan.isode.net/accidentreport;item=ndina872be'/>
</message>
Sometimes it's desirable to annotate a reference in a previous message. An example of this might be where a MIX channel asynchronously adds information about references made in previous messages by users. In this case the message MUST NOT contain a body. Here the anchor attribute is used to provide a URI to the previous message. TODO: URI scheme for messages.
<message type='groupchat'
id='sotehu-bthbtp32h5'
from='balcony@channels.shakespeare.lit'
to='romeo@montegue.lit/30d3d8'>
<reference xmlns='urn:xmpp:reference:0'
type='data'
anchor='xmpp:balcony@channels.shakespeare.lit?;node=messages;item=bnhob'
begin='72'
end='78'
uri='xmpp:fdp.shakespeare.lit?;node=fdp/submitted/stan.isode.net/accidentreport;item=ndina872be'/>
</message>
TODO.
None.
Needs a namespace.
When advanced.
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The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 6120) and XMPP IM (RFC 6121) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.
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The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".
1. XEP-0346: Form Discovery and Publishing <https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0346.html>.
2. XEP-0030: Service Discovery <https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0030.html>.
3. XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities <https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0115.html>.
4. Dijkstra convention of ranges <https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html>
Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/
Initial published version approved by the XMPP Council.
First draft.
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