What is XMPP?

XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is an open source, decentralized messaging protocol that was born from Jabber, an early realtime chat protocol. It has since evolved into a powerful messaging engine that can be used for communication across a wide variety of different networks and platforms.

The XSF (XMPP Standards Foundation) encourages the use of XMPP in four main areas: IoT, WebRTC, Instant Messaging, and Social.

XMPP Design Patterns and Use Cases

The core XMPP transport mechanism consists of a streaming XML connection layer with TLS channel encryption, while authentication is handled with the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL).

By its nature, XMPP is highly extensible and custom functionality can be built on top of the basic open source protocol. XMPP also offers inherent support for presence (or "status") info and contact lists (or "rosters") and is thus particularly suitable for use in any communication system based on the Publish/Subscribe paradigm.

XMPP can be applied in use cases such as network management, IoT device control, news feeds and content syndication, multi-user collaboration, realtime group chat, file-sharing, and multiplayer gaming.