Discussion: XMPP Integration

[sunjam]

Specific discussions should take place in the subtickets.

This is a discussion thread for XMPP integration, as mentioned in meta thread #687. Also mentioned in chat meta thread #294 #395 #40 #35.

XMPP chat is currently available as a Nextcloud packaged app, but it would be ideal to have it integrated directly into Talk.

[GoetheG]

The college society I worked for tested a lot of different solutions for internal collaboration. We tested Slack, Mattermost, Riot.im/Matrix, Rocket.Chat, stackfield, Threema Work. From my point of view, from a non computer scientist who likes easy to use software, it would be the best solution to closely cooperate with Rocket.Chat.

I know that Rocket.Chat has not a PHP basis. I can't say how complicated it is to build a bridge. But I honestly think that this is the best solution from a user experience perspective. Rocket.Chat can be installed on an own server and can also be hosted somewhere. I have NETWAYS in mind here. And for guys like me, who just want to have a good looking and working peace of software, which is easy to update and to install, Rocket.Chat seems to be the way to go.

Starting with XMPP makes the most sense IMHO. It's an established protocol with lots of users and clients. Frank Karlitschek wrote in his blog about "an XMPP compatible API so that third party Chat Apps can talk to a Nextcloud Talk server". That would provides NC Talk with desktop clients, which would be nice.
And I assume that means directly, without the need for a full XMPP server and a traditional bridge that logs into two accounts/servers and coppies messages frome one to the other.

So I guess the first questions would be what these integrations are supposed to do exactly and what's possible for each protocol.

[stevenroose]

Probably just implementing XMPP s2s federation would already make a lot of sense. Then Nextcloud Talk users could communicate with all Jabber/XMPP users. To make use of all the existing client software, c2s is needed.

[stone212]

@stevenroose Our use case makes it better to use our existing XMPP server but allow NC users to use a NC-based client. (Similar to the javascript chat app but integrated with Talk). FWIW

[poVoq]

ConverseJS now has a headless build option that could be included as an alternative XMPP chat backend:
https://github.com/conversejs/converse.js/tree/master/src/headless

Combined with stuff from the very nice JSXC Nextcloud integration, this would be a huge step forward for Nextcloud Talk :)

[LorbusChris]

XMPP support would be a huge step towards Jitsi integration as well

[Martinligabue]

Also Thunderbird supports it, it would be nice to have it connected