Netbeans Collab Service API

Overview

• portal channels displaying contact lists and allowing real-time communication.
• presence status display and initiation of conferences from other Web-based collaboration applications, such as web-based email, calendar, or address books.
• desktop-based instant messaging clients
• handheld-based instant messaging clients (through a gateway)
• leverage presence status in server applications in order to notify end-users optimally.

Available services

• The Presence Service, which lets users access other user's availability, and update one's availability.
• The Conference Service, real-time text conferencing between two or more users
• The News Service, a bulletin board service with instant delivery of new, modified and deleted postings
• The Notification Service, an acknowledged alerting/messaging service.
• The Personal Store Service, a way to store, retrieve and manage application configuration information, such as contact lists, persistent subscriptions, and application profiles.
• The Content Streaming Service, which let users negotiate the use of a data streaming protocol, and use it to transfer files, or other data.

Architecture

How to use the API

Creating a Session

In order to create sessions, an application must first instantiate CollaborationSessionFactory. Then the factory can be used to create one or more session objects. Example:

CollaborationSessionFactory fac = new CollaborationSessionFactory();

// create a session listener for asynchronous session events
CollaborationSessionListener listener = new MyCollaborationSessionListener();

// create a session
Session session = fac.getSession("myserver.example.com", "fred@example.com",
                                 "secret", listener);

Accessing services

Once a Session is created, individual services can  be accessed using the corresponding accessor and initialization methods. So for example with the Conference service:

// access the Conference Service
ConferenceService cService = session.getConferenceService();

// and do not forget to initialize it with your listener
ConferenceServiceListener csListener = new MyConferenceServiceListener();
cService.initialize(csListener);

The Conference Service

// create a ConferenceListener for asynchronous chat events
// (e.g. messages).
MyConferenceListener cListener = new MyConferenceListener();
// create the conference.
Conference c = cService.setupConference(cListener, Conference.MANAGE)

// create invite message 
Message newMsg = c.createInviteMessage(); 
newMsg.addRecipient("roscoe@example.com"); 
newMsg.addRecipient("yolanda@example.com"); 
MessagePart part = newMsg.newPart(); 
part.setContent("Let's talk"); 
newMsg.addPart(part); 
 
// send the invite 
e.invite(newMsg); 
 

// join public conference conf123@example.com
Conference c = cService.join("conf123@example.com", cListener);

The News Service

// create a news channel listener for asynchronous events
(e.g. messages added or removed).
// note: MyNewsChannelListener implements the NewsChannelListener
interface.
MyNewsChannelListener bbListener = new MyNewsChannelListener();
// subscribe to the news channel.  news channel messages
are received
// asynchronously, through the listener.  One may also pass
a null
NewsChannel  bb = nService.getNewsChannel("hugo@example.com",
bbListener)

Once created, the NewsChannel object can be used to generate, add or remove messages.

// generate a new message
Message message = bb.createMessage();
// add content to message
// publish it
bb.addMessage(message);

To find out which news channels are available, use the listNewsChannels method:

// get a Collection of news channels.
java.util.Collection bbList = session.listNewsChannels();
// loop through the list until you find the one you want
if (bbList != null) {
    java.util.Iterator bbIter = bbList.iterator();
    while (bbIter.hasNext()) {
        NewsChannel bb = (NewsChannel)bbIter.next();
        if (bb.getDestination.equals("theOneIWant")) {
            break;
        }
    }
}
// subscribe to it to get messages
bb.subscribe(bbListener);

 

 

bb = session.newNewsChannel("hugo@example.com", bbListener,                               Conference.PUBLISH);

The Notification Service

To send a message, first create one

// start a message to noah@example.com Message message = nSession.createMessage("noah@example.com");

fill it with appropriate content and headers,

message.setHeader("Subject", "just a demo"); MessagePart part = message.newPart(); String content = "the body of the message"; part.setContentType("text/plain"); part.setContent(content.bytes());

create a message status listener if you expect status or replies,

MyMessageStatusListener mListener = new MyMessageStatusListener();

and send it:

session.sendMessage(message, mListener);

Messages can also be received.  This is done through the NotificationSessionListener.onMessage method.  Received messages may be acknowledged or replied-to through the MessageHandler argument to onMessage.
 

// mark a message read. handler.sendStatus(MessageStatus.READ); // reply to a message replyMessage = nSession.createMessage(); ... handler.sendReply(replayMessage);

 

The Presence Service

To use the presence service, first create a PresenceSession using CollaborationSession.accessService

To access the presence information of a user of the service, use the fetch or subscribe methods

// subscribe to hugo's presentity
// Note: MyPresenceInfoListener implements PresenceInfoListener
MyPresenceInfoListener piListener = new MyPresenceInfoListener();
java.util.Date expiration =
PresenceSubscription subs = pSession.subscribe("hugo@example.com",
piListener, expiration);
...
// unsubscribe
subs.cancel();

Presence information is received asynchronously by the presence info listener in the form of an XML String. This String may be parsed using the PresenceHelper class. The following prints out presence info.

PresenceHelper ph = new PresenceHelper(pi /* XML string */);
for (Iterator i = ph.getTuples().iterator(); i.hasNext() ; ) {
    PresenceTuple t = (PresenceTuple)i.next();
    System.out.println(t.destination + " " + t.status + " " + t.note);
}

To publish presence information updates, use the publish method. The argument is an XML String which can be genberated with the help of the PresenceHelper class.

PresenceTuple pt = new PresenceTuple("hugo@example.com",
                                     PresenceSession.STATUS_AWAY);
PresenceHelper ph = new PresenceHelper();
ph.addTuple(pt);
pSession.publish(ph.toString());

 

The Personal Store Service

To use the Personal Store service, first create a PersonalStoreSession using CollaborationSession.accessService

To retrieve the contact list of the user who owns the current session, retrieve the contact folders

Collection folders = psSession.getFolders(PersonalStoreFolder.CONTACT_FOLDER);

For each folder fthe list of contacts can be obtained as follows:

Collection entries = f.getEntries();
System.out.println(" - " + f.getDisplayName());
for (Iterator j = entries.iterator() ; j.hasNext() ;) {
    PersonalContact c = (PersonalContact)j.next();
    System.out.println("Found " + c.getDisplayName() + " in " + f.getDisplayName());
}

Using an alternate session provider

The instructions listed above will let you create an IM session, similar to a session that would be created by an XMPP/Jabber client. However, it is possible to create other types of session, by using alternative session providers. Several provider implementation are bundle with the API. Others can be built and used by the application (e.g. netbeans) in order to leverage protocols not provided by default.

The Collab Service Factory can be told to use a specific session provider, by setting the org.netbeans.lib.collab.provider system property to the class name of the provider yopu want to use. For instance, com.example.SessionProvider being a Session Provider, one would call:

System.setProperty(CollaborationSessionFactory.systemProperty, "com.example.SessionProvider");

The Collab Service API includes two alternative session providers:

• org.netbeans.lib.collab.xmpp.XMPPSecureSessionProvider: connects to the XMPP service using the legacy SSL mode (as opposed to usign startTLS).
• org.netbeans.lib.collab.xmpp.ProxySessionProvider: proxies XMPP traffic through a HTTP or SOCKS V5 proxy as specified using the service URL argument.
• org.netbeans.lib.collab.xmpp.XMPPComponentSessionProvider: authenticates to the jabber service as a jabber:component:accept component
• org.netbeans.lib.collab.xmpp.XMPPSecureComponentSessionProvider: same as above but using the old Jabber SSL.
• org.netbeans.lib.collab.xmpp.httpbind.HTTPBindSessionProvider: accesses a Jabber/XMPP service through a JEP-0124 gateway.

The following (outdated) block diagram shows relationships between the various providers, the Collab Service API implementation, IM components, and custom application.
 
 

Sample programs

These are a few simple but actual examples written with the Collab Service API. They are provided here for educational purposes only and should not be used for other purposes.

• Talk, a simple command line talk utility using the conference service. It allows the user to initiate conferences, invite users in conferences, be invited to conferences, and toggle between conferences.
  source code: Talk.java
• Watcher, a simple command line utility allowing the users to keep track of the presence of other users.
  source code: Watcher.java
• Alerter, a simple command line utility which listens for incoming notifications
  source code: Alerter.java
• News, a simple command line utility to manage news channel: create a news channel, post new messages or remive existing messages. listens for incoming notifications
  source code: News.java

Default API Provider's documentation (XMPPSessionProvider)

Default API Provider's documentation