XEP-0256: Last Activity 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. Use Cases

Last Activity (XEP-0012) [1] defines a method for determining the last time that an XMPP entity was active. This document specifies that an online client MAY include last activity information when sending a presence update. Including such information essentially means "when I sent this presence notification I had last been active at time T".

There are two primary use cases:

1. When a client sends initial presence to start a presence session, the last activity notation indicates when that client terminated its previous presence session.
2. When a client changes from available to "away" or "xa", the last activity notation indicates when that client was last active during the current presence session.

The following sections show examples of each use case.

<presence from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'>
  <query xmlns='jabber:iq:last' seconds='86511'/>
</presence>

<presence from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony'>
  <show>away</show>
  <query xmlns='jabber:iq:last' seconds='600'/>
</presence>

<presence from='juliet@capulet.com/balcony' to='romeo@montague.net'>
  <show>away</show>
  <query xmlns='jabber:iq:last' seconds='600'/>
  <delay xmlns='urn:xmpp:delay'
     from='capulet.com'
     stamp='2002-09-10T23:41:07Z'/>
</presence>

2. Security Considerations

Including a last activity notation in presence notifications can enable those who receive such notifications to determine exactly when a user has stopped interacting with his or her XMPP client, but this information is in essence already available if the user publishes timely presence updates. Therefore, this specification introduces no new vulnerabilities.

3. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [7].

4. XMPP Registrar Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the XMPP Registrar [8].

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0256
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Version: 1.1
Last Updated: 2009-09-15
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core, XMPP IM, XEP-0012
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: N/A
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