<p>Update groupchat-messages-in-user-archive advice, introducing fields and disco features to make behaviour explicit in future implementations, in light of Last Call feedback.</p>
<remark><p>Document the ability to page through results by message UIDs, define the <archived/> element, and various minor improvements.</p></remark>
but it is expected that all messages that hold meaningful content, rather than state changes such as Chat State Notifications, would be archived. Rules are specified later in this document.</p>
<p>A stored message consists of at least the following pieces of information:</p>
<p>Note that 'incoming' and 'outgoing' messages are viewed within the context of the archived JID, rather than the system as a whole. For example, if romeo@montegue.lit sent a message to juliet@capulet.lit, it would be an outgoing message in the context of archiving for Romeo, and an incoming message in the context of archiving for Juliet.</p>
<section2topic='Order of messages'anchor='archive_order'>
<p>Order within the archive MUST be preserved, where the order of messages is the same as the order that the client originally received them (or would have received them if online). Throughout this document the term 'chronological order' refers to this order, however implementors should take care not to rely on timestamps alone for
ordering messages, as multiple messages may share the same timestamp.</p>
</section2>
<section2topic='Message retention and deletion'anchor='archives_deletion'>
<p>The most typical address is that of a user's own bare JID, within which those messages sent to or from that
user's account would generally automatically be stored by the server. The collection
is ordered chronologically by the time each message was sent/received.</p>
<p>Servers that expose archive messages of sent/received messages on behalf of local users MUST expose these archives to the user on the user's bare JID.</p>
<p>While this document talks about 'clients' and 'servers', as these are the common cases, the querying entity (referred to as a 'client') need not be an XMPP client as defined by RFC6120, but could potentially be any type of entity, and the queried entity (referred to as a 'server') need not be an XMPP server as defined by RFC6120, although access controls might prohibit any given entity from being able to access an archive.</p>
</section2>
<section2topic='Communicating the archive ID'anchor='archives_id'>
<p>When a message is archived, the server MUST add an <stanza-id/> element as defined in &xep0359; to the message, which informs the recipient of where and under what ID the message is stored. When doing this the server MUST follow the business rules defined in XEP-0359. The 'by' attribute MUST be set to the address of the archive. For regular users that’s the bare JID of the account and for MUC that’s the bare JID of the room.</p>
<p>Servers MUST NOT include the <stanza-id/> element in messages addressed to JIDs that do not have permissions to access the archive, such as a users’s outgoing messages to their contacts. However servers SHOULD include the element as a child of the forwarded message when using &xep0280;</p>
<examplecaption='Client receives a message that has been archived'><![CDATA[
<p>Note: Previous versions of this protocol did not specify any interaction with stanza-id, and clients MUST NOT interpret XEP-0359 IDs in messages as archive IDs unless the server advertises support for 'urn:xmpp:mam:2' specifically.</p>
<p>To ensure that the client knows when the results are complete, the server MUST send the &IQ; result after last query result has been sent
to the client. The client can optionally include a 'queryid' attribute in their query, which allows the client to match results to their initiating query.</p>
server MUST only return messages if they match the supplied JID. A message in a user's archive matches if the JID matches either the to or from of the message. An item in a MUC archive matches if the publisher of the item matches the JID; note that this should only be available to entities that would already have been allowed to know the publisher of the events (e.g. this could not be used by a visitor to a semi-anonymous MUC).</p>
<p>To allow querying for messages the user sent to themselves, the client needs to set the 'with' attribute to the account JID. In that case, the server MUST only return results where both the 'to' and 'from' match the bare JID (either as bare or by ignoring the resource), as otherwise every message in the archive would match.</p>
<p>If any UID requested by the client in any of the 'before-id', 'after-id' or 'ids' form fields is not present in the archive, the server MUST return an item-not-found error in response to the query.</p>
<section3topic='Including groupchat results in a user archive'anchor='query-include-groupchat'>
<p>If the server advertises that it includes groupchat messages in a user's archive (see <linkurl='#support'>Determining support</link>), a client may query a user archive and request for them to be included in the result with the 'include-groupchat' field set to 'true'.
</p>
<examplecaption='Querying the archive and including groupchat messages in results'><![CDATA[
<p>If the server advertises that it includes groupchat messages in the archive, or it advertises that it doesn't, a client may request that they not be included by setting the 'include-groupchat' field to 'false'.</p>
<examplecaption='Querying the archive and excluding groupchat messages from results'><![CDATA[
<p>Note that where the client doesn't specify the 'include-groupchat' field, it is implementation-defined whether groupchat messages are included in the results (see <linkurl='#business_rules'>Business Rules</link>). Clients MUST NOT include this field where servers don't advertise support, as the server would reject such a form.</p>
<section3topic='Retrieving form fields'anchor='query-form'>
<p>In order for the client find out about additional fields the server might support, it can send an iq stanza of type 'get' addressed to the archive like this:</p>
<p>If the client understands any of the additional fields it MAY proceed to include any of them in subsequent queries. It is not required to include any or all of the supported fields in queries.</p>
<p>A special note about the 'ids' field: this field is of type 'list-multi' which typically is used to allow the client to select from a provided list of options. In this case the list of all possible ids MUST NOT be provided by the server, as it is likely to be extremely large. Instead the server MUST include a &xep0122;<validate/> element that signals the list is open to arbitrary values provided by the client.</p>
<p>As specified in &xep0068;, names of custom fields SHOULD use Clark notation to avoid conflicts with other extensions.</p>
<examplecaption="Client uses two discovered query fields in a query"><![CDATA[
<p>Note that as the 'with', 'start' and 'end' fields MUST be implemented by servers, clients are able to submit forms using combinations of only these fields without needing to first fetch the form from the server and the types of these fields MUST be 'jid-single', 'text-single' and 'text-single' respectively. A server MUST NOT rely on a client having first requested the form before submitting queries.</p>
<p>The archive results MUST be sorted in chronological order, both within the returned results and within the ordering of RSM such that if a client were to request the first 10 stanzas in an archive, then use RSM to request the next 10 stanzas (by providing the 'after' element with the UID of the 10th stanza in the first results) all 20 result stanzas would be received in chronological order.
<p>Note: There is no concept of an "open query", and servers MUST be prepared to receive arbitrary page requests at any time.</p>
<p>RSM does not define the behaviour of including both <before> and <after> in the same request. To retrieve a range of items between two known ids, use before-id and after-id in the query form instead.</p>
<p>If the UID contained within an <after> or <before> element is not present in the archive, the server MUST return an item-not-found error in response to the query.</p>
<examplecaption='Message id not found in archive'><![CDATA[
<p>When the results returned by the server are complete (that is: when they have not been limited by the maximum size of the result page (either as specified or enforced by the server)), the server MUST include a 'complete' attribute on the <fin> element, with a value of 'true'; this informs the client that it doesn't need to perform further paging to retreive the requested data. If it is not the last page of the result set, the server MUST either omit the 'complete' attribute, or give it a value of 'false'.</p>
<examplecaption='Server completes a result with the last page of messages'><![CDATA[
<p>Sometimes (e.g. due to network or storage partitioning, or other transient errors) the server might return results to a client that are unstable (e.g. they might later change in sequence or content). In such a situation the server MUST stamp the <fin> element with a 'stable' attribute with a value of 'false'. If the server knows that the data it's serving are stable it MUST either stamp a 'stable' attribute with a value of 'true', or no such attribute. An example of when unstable might legitimately be returned is if the MAM service uses a clustered data store and a query covers a time period for which the data store has not yet converged; it the server could return best-guess results and tell the client that they may be unstable. A client SHOULD NOT cache unstable results long-term without later confirming (by reissuing appropriate queries) that they have become stable.</p>
</section3>
<section3topic='Requesting the last page'>
<p>To request the page at the end of the archive (i.e. the most recent messages), include just an empty <before/> element in the RSM part of the query. As defined by RSM, this will return the last page of the archive.</p>
<examplecaption='A request for the last page in an archive'><![CDATA[
<p>Within the returned page, all results are still in chronological order, that is, the first result you receive will be the oldest item in the page, and the last result you receive will be the last item in the archive.</p>
<p>When planning a query, a client may wish to learn the current state of the archive. This includes information about the first/last entries in the archive.</p>
<p>When the archive advertises support for 'urn:xmpp:mam:2#extended' then the archive supports queries for this metadata via an iq of type 'get' to the
archive's address, with a <metadata/> payload in the 'urn:xmpp:mam:2' namespace.</p>
<p>The server response includes a <metadata/> element containing information about the archive. This element MUST include <start/> and <end/>
elements, which each have an 'id' and XEP-0082 formatted 'timestamp of the first and last messages in the archive respectively.</p>
<p>Different entities will have different requirements for which data are stored, as might different deployments. This section provides general rules within which a server will act. While there may be local policy restrictions that prevent archiving of some aspects discussed here, this is a RECOMMENDED baseline. A server MAY implement any subset of possible archives for JIDs it controls (although it MUST advertise support only for those JIDs that support it).</p>
<p>No requirements are placed on how a server implements its storage beyond that it has to store data sufficient to be able to comply with this document. When this document describes storage requirements (e.g. MUST NOT store more than one copy...), it refers to what would appear to have been stored in order to satisfy the query.</p>
<p>If an entity (user's server, MUC room, pubsub node, ...) rejects an incoming message (such as from an occupant not allowed to send messages to the room, a user not authorized to publish to a pubsub node, a contact blocked by the user etc.) that message should not appear in the archive for the entity that rejected it - the archive should represent what logical entities (MUC occupants, users, pubsub subscribers...) would have received, and so only contain messages accepted for delivery to such entities.</p>
<p>A user archive is anticipated to provide the user with the ability to access their prior conversations. To this end, a server SHOULD include in a user archive all of the messages a user sends or receives of type 'normal' or 'chat' that contain a <body> element. A server MAY include additional non-conversation messages. A server MAY include messages of type 'headline', but this is not generally suggested.</p>
<p>Previous versions of this specification stated that a server SHOULD also include messages of type 'groupchat' that have a <body> - however many deployments did not follow this (although some did). This advice has now been dropped, and servers MAY include groupchat messages in their archives. Whether a server stores groupchat messages or not is now left as an implementation (or deployment) decision. Whether a client wants to receive groupchat messages in results can be signalled with the 'include-groupchat' field (if supported by the server - see <linkurl='#support'>Determining support</link>) - where the server doesn't support this field, or where a client doesn't specify it in the query, whether groupchat messages are included in the result is implementation-defined; this allows existing deployments to not break with the introduction of the 'include-groupchat' query field in a later version of this specification, but it is RECOMMENDED that all client implementations of the current version of this specification always include the field where the server supports it, and RECOMMENDED that servers support it.</p>
<p>At a minimum, the server MUST store the <body> elements of a stanza. It is suggested that other elements that are used in a given deployment to supplement conversations (e.g. XHTML-IM payloads) are also stored. Other elements MAY be stored.</p>
<p>If a server supports mechanisms that multiply copies of a stanza (e.g. Carbons, or forking a stanza to a bare JID), it MUST store such a staza within a given archive only once, irrespective of multiple connected clients receiving copies.</p>
<p>A server MAY choose not to deliver offline messages to a client that has already queried their MAM archive and received the archived copies of those messages that would otherwise be delivered - while not required of an implementation, this is helpful to avoid duplicate messages for clients, so is suggested.</p>
<p>A MUC archives allows a user to view the conversation within a room. All messages sent to the room that contain a <body> element SHOULD be stored, as should subject change stanzas, apart from those messages that the room rejects.</p>
<p>A MUC archive MUST store each message only once (not, for example, every copy sent out to an occupant).</p>
<p>A MUC archive MUST NOT include 'private message' results (those sent directly between occupants, not shared in the room) in the results.</p>
<p>A MUC archive MUST check that the user requesting the archive has the right to enter it at the time of the query and only allow access if so. In a members-only chat room, only owners, admins or members can query a room archive. In the case of open MUC rooms, the MUC archives can generally be accessed by any users (including those who have never entered the room) who do not have an affiliation of 'outcast', but a MUC archive MAY further limit access based on other criteria as part of the deployment policy. A MUC archive MAY, if it stores historical data about previous configuration states, limit the results returned to only those that the querying user would have been authorised to see at the time (e.g. it MAY limit the results to not include results while a user was an outcast).</p>
<p>When sending out the archives to a requesting client, the forwarded stanza MUST NOT have a 'to' attribute, and the 'from' MUST be the occupant JID of the sender of the archived message.</p>
<p>In the case of non-anonymous rooms or if the recipient of the MUC archive has the right to access the sender real JID at the time of the query, the archive message will use extended message information in an <x/> element qualified by the 'http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#user' namespace and containing an <item/> child with a 'jid' attribute specifying the occupant's full JID, as defined for non-anonymous room presence in &xep0045;. The archiving entity MUST strip any pre-existing <x> element from MUC messages (as MUC rooms are not required to do this).</p>
<p>The IDs used within an archive MUST be unique per item stored and MUST NOT be reused, even if the original item with a given ID has since been removed from the archive. If a server provides multiple archives (e.g. many user archives, or many MUC archives), the IDs do not need to be unique across all of these archives unless the server also allows a single query to be run across multiple archives (e.g. searching of all MUC rooms), discussion of which is beyond the scope of this document. These IDs are strings that servers may construct in any manner, and clients must treat as opaque strings (e.g. there is no requirement for them to be numeric, sequenced or GUIDs).</p>
<p>Servers that understand the 'include-groupchat' field MUST advertise the 'urn:xmpp:mam:2#groupchat-field' (even if they cannot return groupchat messages), and servers that understand the 'include-groupchat' field and store groupchat messages in the user's archive must advertise the 'urn:xmpp:mam:2#groupchat-available' feature</p>
<p>A client MUST verify the source of MAM query results against an open query (i.e. checking the stanza 'from' matches the entity that was queried) and MUST either ignore or otherwise disregard (maybe with a warning to the user) unsolicited results - whether because the 'from' doesn't match an open query, or because there is no open query. This is to avoid the situation where a malicious entity sends MAM results while the client is querying a different entity and the client processes the malicious results as if they were part of the legitimate results. Additionally, if the client has multiple queries in flight at once, it MUST also check that the query ID for a result matches that of an open query for that entity.</p>
<p>This specification re-uses the <x> element from the 'http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#user' namespace to convey information about the sender of a message in a MUC room. However this element is not sanitized by MUC services, so the archiving entity MUST strip any existing <x> element in the 'http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#user' namespace from messages before archiving them (regardless of whether it adds in its own <x> element).</p>