PHP Code, Setup and Demo of Jaxl boshchat application

Jaxl 2.0 bosh support allow web developers to write real time web applications within minutes, without having any pre-requisite knowledge about the XMPP protocol itself. In this blog post, I will walk you through setup and demo of an XMPP based web chat application using Jaxl library.

Get the code
Follow the following steps to download and install this sample web application on your systems:

• Clone the development branch of Jaxl library

  root@ubuntu:~/git# git clone git@github.com:abhinavsingh/JAXL.git
  root@ubuntu:~/git# cd JAXL/
  root@ubuntu:~/git/JAXL#

  If you are not familiar with git, simply visit JAXL@github, click Download Source and extract under ~/git/JAXL directory on your system

• Once inside Jaxl source directory, build the latest development package

  root@ubuntu:~/git/JAXL# ./build.sh
  building...

• Install Jaxl library (view installation detail and options)

  root@ubuntu:~/git/JAXL# ./build.sh install
  uninstalling old package...
  installing...

Setup web chat application
Jaxl library is default installed under /usr/share/php/jaxl folder. Application code for our web chat application can be found under /usr/share/php/jaxl/app/boshchat folder.

Follow these steps to setup web chat application on your system:

• I assume you have http://localhost/ configured on your local web server and it runs out of /var/www folder. Create following symlinks:

  root@ubuntu:~/git/JAXL# cd /var/www
  root@ubuntu:/var/www# ln -s /usr/share/php/jaxl/app/boshchat/boshchat.php index.php
  root@ubuntu:/var/www# ln -s /usr/share/php/jaxl/app/boshchat/jaxl.ini jaxl.ini
  root@ubuntu:/var/www# ln -s /usr/share/php/jaxl/env/jaxl.js jaxl.js
  root@ubuntu:/var/www# ln -s /usr/bin/jaxl jaxl.php

  Edit/Remove #!/usr/bin/env php inside jaxl.php if it causes any problem on your system.

• Open and edit jaxl.ini

  define('JAXL_BOSH_COOKIE_DOMAIN', false);

• I assume you have access to XMPP over Bosh enabled jabber server. Ejabberd users can verify this by hitting http://localhost:5280/http-bind in the browser
• Open and edit index.php

  define('BOSHCHAT_ADMIN_JID', 'admin@localhost');

  All messages sent using this web chat application will be routed to BOSHCHAT_ADMIN_JID

Ready for the demo
To run this example web chat application, visit http://localhost in your browser window. Enter a username/password already registered on your jabber server and press connect.

Login as BOSHCHAT_ADMIN_JID using a desktop client, so that you can receive messages sent from the browser on your desktop client.

Below is a screenshot when I logged in as “abhinavsingh” from browser and BOSHCHAT_ADMIN_JID was set to “jaxl@jaxl.im”: