XEP-0319: Last User Interaction in Presence

NOTICE: The protocol defined herein is a Draft Standard of the XMPP Standards Foundation. Implementations are encouraged and the protocol is appropriate for deployment in production systems, but some changes to the protocol are possible before it becomes a Final Standard.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This protocol describes a way to communicate a user's last interaction time with other XMPP entities over <presence/> stanzas. For the purposes of this document, user interaction here refers to a human end user interacting with her device by means of a keyboard, mouse, touch screen, and so on. Based on this information XMPP clients can display the time a contact went idle or a duration for how long a contact has been idle, thereby allowing end users to estimate the expected responsiveness of their contacts.

This protocol uses absolute timestamps formatted according to XMPP Date and Time Profiles (XEP-0082) [1], indicated as value of the 'since' attribute in the <idle/> element.

Experience has shown a number of issues with Last Activity in Presence (XEP-0256) [2]:

• The use of relative durations is too vague. It requires additional information from Delayed Delivery (XEP-0203) [3] to provide a reliable user experience.
• Distinguishing between the idle and last online use cases is very difficult.
• It is desirable to have idle time indiciated for <presence/> <show/> values other than "away" and "xa".

Updating XEP-0256 directly would be problematic as it would break compatibility with existing implementations. Instead a new protocol is described for handling the idle time use case; the last online use case is handled by PubSub Since (XEP-0312) [4].

2. Use Cases

There are two main use cases for this extension, explained in more detail in the following sections.

<presence from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'>
  <show>away</show>
  <idle xmlns='urn:xmpp:idle:1' since='1969-07-21T02:56:15Z'/>
</presence>

<presence from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony' />

3. XML Schema

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<xs:schema
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    elementFormDefault="qualified"
    targetNamespace="urn:xmpp:idle:1"
    xmlns="urn:xmpp:idle:1">

  <xs:annotation>
    <xs:documentation>
      The protocol documented by this schema is defined in
      XEP-0319: http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0319.html
    </xs:documentation>
  </xs:annotation>

  <xs:element name="idle">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:attribute name="since" use="required" type="xs:string"/>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>

</xs:schema>

4. Acknowledgements

Thanks to Florian Schmaus, Christian Schudt, and Lance Stout for their helpful comments.

5. Security Considerations

The security considerations of XEP-0082 apply to this protocol.

This specification introduces no new security or privacy concerns. While including a last user interaction notation in <presence/> updates can enable recipients to determine exactly when a user has stopped interacting with her XMPP client or even their system, this information is in essence already available if the user's client publishes timely presence updates.

6. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [5].

7. XMPP Registrar Considerations

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0319
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Version: 1.0
Last Updated: 2015-04-02
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core, XMPP IM, XEP-0082
Supersedes: XEP-0256
Superseded By: None
Short Name: idle
Source Control: HTML
This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Appendix C: Legal Notices

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP

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.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion on other xmpp.org discussion lists might also be appropriate; see <http://xmpp.org/about/discuss.shtml> for a complete list.

Errata can be sent to <editor@xmpp.org>.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance

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".

Appendix G: Notes

Appendix H: Revision History

Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/

END