Ajax jabber/XMPP client recommendations (real experience only please) !

Question

i'm setting up a chat system for my niche social site and have decided on ejabberd for the server side, but i cannot find any decent web-based ajax clients. most seem to be abandoned years ago or simply do not work. i've looked at every single one here :

http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/clients/

Is anyone running a live site and using an ajax-based client that they can vouch for that works and is in active development ? I do not mind paying for something, but I do not want to do any development work whatsoever.

thanks in advance.

Solution 1

I'm unsure of its maintainership status, but I usually point people who ask me this question to TrophyIM. It is a small and themeable chat client written on top of Strophe.js.

If you want group chat, you can try Speeqe (see it in action here), which is also based on Strophe.js.

Most people have very specific needs in the web domain, and I think this contributes to the lack of generally useful web-based IM clients. You can easily write one yourself, and there are several examples of such systems in my book, Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery.

Disclaimer: I wrote Strophe.js and the book so I am obviously biased.

Solution 2

We just released Candy under MIT-License, an AJAX Jabber Client built with Strophe.js.

Why Candy?

• Focused on real-time multi-user chatting
• Easy to configure, easy to run, easy to use
• Highly customizable
• 100% well-documented JavaScript source code
• Built for Jabber (XMPP), using famous technologies
• Used and approved in a productive environment with up to 400 concurrent users
• Works with all major web browsers including IE7

Take a look :)

Solution 3

If you are ready to go ahead and build out custom UI for your chat application + doing some PHP/Javascript/XMPP stuff you may checkout Jaxl library. It have several examples on how to build a web based client for real-time chat.

Alternately you can simply try out ready to use chat client from Jaxl IM which is a generic/scalable client written using Jaxl library.

Solution 4

I played with strophe.js a lot in the past. It is a really cool library for writting xmpp clients(pure javascript). In his book professional xmpp he explains how to write a multi-user-chat client in javascript. I guess you have to do some coding, but this library is really powerfull and you have complete control.

Solution 5

Another one that's doing rather well is Jappix which is open sourced here https://github.com/jappix. With an overview of the different sub-projects here http://jappix.org/features

Depending on your needs Jappix Mini may be all you need. (Facebook like bottom-right chat widget) Otherwise you could get a copy of the full client running.

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Comments

[Sherif Buzz]

Thanks i've already signedup with them, but they're still in alpha with beta coming out beginning of the year.

[lkraav]

Candy is of course awesome and looks to be among the current cream of the crop. I'm looking for something that would let me show multiple twitter-like streams horizontally, TweetDeck style, with access control and file uploads. I wonder whether rolling up the JS sleeves and jumping on candy-plugins bandwagon would be the way to go here.

[DitherSky]

Jaxl IM is down. Is there any way to get the said client? Is it open-source?

[Michael Weibel]

It's not a library, it's a client. If you'd like to use it as an im-client you'll need to make some non-trivial changes. I think there are better options for normal im-clients and/or using strophe.js directly.

[Michael Weibel]

@DitherSky thanks for changing the link, we changed the organization name some time ago and I forgot to update it here.

[Michael Weibel]

Well we thought some time ago about adding also classical IM support to it but our spare time is rare currently..

[Abhinav Singh]

Jaxl IM is no longer an active project. It was shutdown some 10 months back. Kindly use other alternatives available in the market.

[Andrew_1510]

IMHO, the answer is still true till now, 2013, three years later.

[starbeamrainbowlabs]

The first link is broken.