It has been a while since I last blogged about the new XMPP transport for Mule ESB. I’ve been making slow progress since then, but I’ve finally arrived at a point where the transport is starting to be useable. I’d like to show that by building a simple jabber client using the XMPP and stdio transports.

Before I can even start sending something I need to connect to a Jabber server. All server information is configured on the connector element.

<xmpp:connector name="xmppConnector" host="localhost" 
    user="dirk" password="secret"/>

Now, let’s send out a message to a chat partner. The input is read from the console so I can interactively play with the transport:

<service name="stdio2xmpp">
    <inbound>
        <stdio:inbound-endpoint system="IN"/>
    </inbound>
    <outbound>
        <pass-through-router>
            <xmpp:outbound-endpoint recipient="mule@localhost" type="CHAT"/>
        </pass-through-router>
    </outbound>
</service>

Now when I type something on the console and press return, a message is created, flows through Mule, and the XMPP transport forwards it to the Jabber server.

Chatting is typically a two way communication so I need a second flow to receive my chat partner’s replies:

<service name="xmpp2stdio">
    <inbound>
        <xmpp:inbound-endpoint type="CHAT" from="mule@localhost" 
            transformer-refs="xmpp2object"/>
    </inbound>
    <outbound>
        <pass-through-router>
            <stdio:outbound-endpoint system="OUT"/>
        </pass-through-router>
    </outbound>
</service>

The xmpp-to-object-transformer (referenced as xmpp2object above) is necessary to extract the payload from the xmpp message that’s received from the Jabber server into a plain String that is displayed on the console.

Did I whet your appetite? You can play with the new transport yourself. Snapshot builds are available from our continuous integration server. I’d be very interested in any feedback you have.

Filed under: Mule ESB | Social tagging: Mule 3 > xmpp