XEP-0162: Best Practices for Roster and Subscription Management

Abstract
This document specifies best practices for roster and subscription management in Jabber/XMPP clients.
Author
Lucas Nussbaum
Copyright
© 2005 – 2020 XMPP Standards Foundation. SEE LEGAL NOTICES.
Status

Deferred

WARNING: This document has been automatically Deferred after 12 months of inactivity in its previous Experimental state. Implementation of the protocol described herein is not recommended for production systems. However, exploratory implementations are encouraged to resume the standards process.
Type
Informational
Version
0.2.1 (2020-06-25)
Document Lifecycle
  1. Experimental
  2. Deferred
  3. Proposed
  4. Active

1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation

RFC 3921 [1] explains how subscriptions and rosters integrate. However, several points are left to the client author's discretion, and this can lead to some confusion among client developers. This document specifies best practices that enable all Jabber clients to manage subscriptions and roster in a coherent way, thus making sure that such clients will not surprise end users with unexpected behavior.

1.2 Overview of subscription states

As defined in RFC 3921 (sections 6, 7, 8), a roster item can have one of the following subscription states:

Additionally, if subscription='from' or subscription='none', you can have ask='subscribe', which means you sent a subscription request to the item but haven't received an answer yet.

2. Removal of Contacts

It is necessary to distinguish two things:

Three problems have to be taken into consideration here:

Therefore, the following behavior is RECOMMENDED for Jabber clients:

  1. When the user asks for the removal of an item with subscription='both', the Jabber client SHOULD ask the user whether he wants to revoke the contact's authorization to see the user's presence too. This action SHOULD be called "Remove" since this is the convention used by other IM systems.

  2. The Jabber client SHOULD NOT remove the contact from the roster. There are two exceptions:

    1. The Jabber client MAY remove the contact from the roster if the user explicitely asked (so the user has to be informed he might remove both presence subscriptions).

    2. The jabber client MAY transparently remove the contact from the roster if the user asked to, and if subscription='none' or subscription='to'.

In addition to the "Remove" action described above, the client MAY provide a way to revoke the contact's subscription to the user's presence. This action, if provided, SHOULD be called "Block" since this is the convention used by other IM networks.

3. Display of Contacts in the Roster

Defining a sensible roster policy is difficult, because many users have different, special needs. We have to ensure that:

The user's roster contains both contacts of interest for the user (contacts with subscription='both' or subscription='to') and contacts which are only interested in receiving the user's presence information. Also, the user might be interested in having some contacts even with subscription='none', because he often sends messages to them but isn't interested in their presence.

Therefore, the following types of contacts SHOULD be displayed by clients:

The client MAY display contacts with subscription='from' which don't match one of the above cases in an additional 'Observers' group. If no 'Observers' group is used, the client SHOULD NOT display contacts which don't match one of the above rules.

Some users give nicknames to contacts they do not want to see, to be able to remember who they are when cleaning the roster. An additional 'Hidden' group MAY be used to handle such contacts. The client SHOULD NOT display contacts if one of their groups is the 'Hidden' group. (This mean that if contact 'C' is in groups 'G' and 'Hidden', 'C' should never be displayed, even in group 'G'.)

3.1 Name of the Hidden group

The name of the 'Hidden' group can be managed in two different ways :

This is left as an open issue since no clients (to the author's knowledge) implement this 'Hidden' group. But the preference should go to the first solution, which avoids relying on Private XML Storage (XEP-0049) [3].


Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series
XEP
Number
0162
Publisher
XMPP Standards Foundation
Status
Deferred
Type
Informational
Version
0.2.1
Last Updated
2020-06-25
Approving Body
XMPP Council
Dependencies
None
Supersedes
None
Superseded By
None
Short Name
N/A
Source Control
HTML

This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Lucas Nussbaum
Email
lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net
JabberID
lucas@nussbaum.fr

Copyright

This XMPP Extension Protocol is copyright © 1999 – 2024 by the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF).

Permissions

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this specification (the "Specification"), to make use of the Specification without restriction, including without limitation the rights to implement the Specification in a software program, deploy the Specification in a network service, and copy, modify, merge, publish, translate, distribute, sublicense, or sell copies of the Specification, and to permit persons to whom the Specification is furnished to do so, subject to the condition that the foregoing copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Specification. Unless separate permission is granted, modified works that are redistributed shall not contain misleading information regarding the authors, title, number, or publisher of the Specification, and shall not claim endorsement of the modified works by the authors, any organization or project to which the authors belong, or the XMPP Standards Foundation.

Disclaimer of Warranty

## NOTE WELL: This Specification is provided on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. ##

Limitation of Liability

In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall the XMPP Standards Foundation or any author of this Specification be liable for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising from, out of, or in connection with the Specification or the implementation, deployment, or other use of the Specification (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if the XMPP Standards Foundation or such author has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

IPR Conformance

This XMPP Extension Protocol has been contributed in full conformance with the XSF's Intellectual Property Rights Policy (a copy of which can be found at <https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/ipr-policy> or obtained by writing to XMPP Standards Foundation, P.O. Box 787, Parker, CO 80134 USA).

Visual Presentation

The HTML representation (you are looking at) is maintained by the XSF. It is based on the YAML CSS Framework, which is licensed under the terms of the CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.

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 <https://xmpp.org/community/> 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

1. RFC 3921: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3921>.

2. XEP-0083: Nested Roster Groups <https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0083.html>.

3. XEP-0049: Private XML Storage <https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0049.html>.

Appendix H: Revision History

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

  1. Version 0.2.1 (2020-06-25)
    Fixed small typos
    ps
  2. Version 0.2 (2005-12-06)
    Added a note about the name of the Hidden group. Clarified which items should be displayed.
    lnu
  3. Version 0.1 (2005-10-19)
    Initial version.
    lnu
  4. Version 0.0.3 (2005-10-18)
    Added a remark about "Remove" vs "Block" in other IM systems.
    lnu
  5. Version 0.0.2 (2005-10-07)
    Integrated some feedback from Standards list discussion.
    lnu
  6. Version 0.0.1 (2005-10-04)
    First draft.
    lnu

Appendix I: Bib(La)TeX Entry

@report{nussbaum2005n/a,
  title = {Best Practices for Roster and Subscription Management},
  author = {Nussbaum, Lucas},
  type = {XEP},
  number = {0162},
  version = {0.2.1},
  institution = {XMPP Standards Foundation},
  url = {https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0162.html},
  date = {2005-10-04/2020-06-25},
}

END