How Google Talk server history pulling is implemented?

Question

Google GTalk clients (web, android, windows) have great ability to suck conversation history from server, even though conversations were done an another jabber client.

• What jabber (XMPP) functionality (XEP) is used for that or is it some custom thing?
• Why no other XMPP client (non Google) has this ability?

P.S. It is programming question, because I am asking about specific XMPP functionality.

Bustard

They probably just log every statement sent through XMPP. They want to know everything anyway... – Rupture

Answer 1

It is possible that this is done using message archiving. See XEP-0136: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html

(And with regard to the other answer, this is supported by ejabberd: http://www.ejabberd.im/mod_archive)

Encomiastic

I've tried to perform a list request as described in XEP-0136 and Google's server replies with 501 - Feature not implemented. See also: #12050247 – Phrasal

Answer 2

Its a property of XMPP server not XMPP/Jabber client. All conversation happens through XMPP Server. So If server wants it can store all the history. As far as I know there is no open source XMPP server which can store history.

Google has it all.

I am not sure, but I think there is no specific XEP for storing history on server.

Kloster

Answer 3

Server side XEP-0136 (message archiving) can be done with ejabberd + mod_archive (mod_archive_odbc variant with sql backend, for better perfomance) or with openfire server with open archive plugin.

Client side, for XEP-0136 I use vacuum im, http://code.google.com/p/vacuum-im/ , it's open-source and cross platform.

Racon