I’m toying around with in-browser XMPP in order to publish information to our users in real time. To start, I wanted to get the strophe.js echobot demo working. I found the posted steps a bit lacking, and thus I present a more detailed procedure for how to get nginx+ejabberd+strophe.js up and running on Ubuntu 10.04 Workstation. When we’re finished, we’ll test using Firefox and Empathy.
Note: The process should be the same for a Ubuntu server, though you’ll have to futz with hostnames and test using your workstation or something like irssi+bitlbee.
Installation
1. Install nginx and ejabberd
foo@bar$ sudo apt-get install ejabberd nginx curl
2. Download strophe.js
foo@bar$ curl - http://code.stanziq.com/strophe/strophejs/releases/strophejs-1.0.1.tar.gz
Verify your machine config
1. Verify you have an entry in your /etc/hosts file for localhost, it should look something like this (yes, silly, but lately for some reason I keep running into people who modify this incorrectly):
#/etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost
Configuring ejabberd
1. Setup account admin account
foo@bar$ sudo ejabberdctl register admin localhost admin
2. Edit /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cf and make the following changes.
In the admin user section, add the username “admin” so that it looks like this:
%% ejabberd.cfg
%% Admin user
{acl, admin, {user, "admin", "localhost"}}.
In the modules section add mod_http bind to the list of loadable modules:
%% ejabberd.cfg
%%
{modules,
[
...
{mod_http_bind, []},
...
]
}.
3. Restart ejabberd
foo@bar$ sudo /etc/init.d/ejabberd restart
4. Verify ejabberd is working by browsing to http://localhost:5280/http-bind
Configuring nginx
1. Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/strophe and include the following:
#nginx.conf
server {
listen 8080;
server_name localhost;
location /http-bind {
proxy_buffering off;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 55;
proxy_pass http://localhost:5280;
}
location / {
# This is where you place your strophejs sample.
root /var/www/strophe;
}
}
Note: If for whatever reason the new configuration conflicts with an existing one, you can probably get by if you change the port number. I used 8080 so that this won’t conflict with the default config.
2. Symlink the config to the sites-enabled folder
foo@bar$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/strophe strophe
3. Be a good little sysadmin and check your work.
foo@bar$ sudo nginx -t the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
4. If it passes, restart nginx
foo@bar$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Setup strophe.js
1. From the directory where you downloaded strophe
foo@bar$ tar -xzvf strophejs-1.0.1.tar.gz foo@bar$ sudo mv strophejs-1.0.1 /var/www/strophe
2. Modify /var/www/strophe/exampl/echobot.js
// echobot.js var BOSH_SERVICE = 'http://localhost:8080/http-bind'
Test!
1. Open Firefox and go to: http://localhost:8080/examples/echobot.html
2. Enter the following:
JID: admin@localhost
Password: admin
3. Click connect, it will show message like this.
Strophe is connecting.
Strophe is connected.
ECHOBOT: Send a message to admin@localhost.local/4199388567126350847984920 to talk to me.
4. Open Empathy and create a new Jabber account.
Login: admin@localhost
Pass: admin
5. Initiate a new chat with the contact id shown in the web browser, in my case: admin@localhost.local/4199388567126350847984920
6. Type a message, and it will appear in the browser.
Done!
