If a requesting entity wishes to traverse the shared folder of an offering entity. It can do so by querying the root directory as it is shown in the following example:

If the offering entity has files to share, it MUST respond with the root-level files of its shared folder. Files and directories at the root level MUST not be the child of any "directory" tag. In order to save bandwidth, the offering entity MAY omit all the children of the file tag except the "name" which is required and MUST always be present.

The file tag has the same attributes as defined in &xep0096;. The "name" attribute is required and must be included in every response. The "size" attribute is only required when responding with detailed information about a file.

if the offering entity has no files to offer

If the requesting entity wants to get detailed information about a file. It can do so by providing its full path.

When replying with detailed information about a file, the offering entity must always include the "name" and "size".

Sometimes the list of files is too big to be efficiently traversed or there are too many peers offering files. This extensions allows simple file search to ease the discovery of files.

The requesting entity can request the fields on which a search can be performed.

The offering entity replies with its search fields. The fields in the following example are required, and they MUST be supported.

Different files have different metadata and all of them may not be completly covered by the fields mentioned before. Of course, any field that doesn't fit could be included in "desc", however this can make search difficult as it is not clearly defined what to look for.

Fields can be extended using dataforms, as it is defined in &xep0055;

If a requesting entity wishes to search for a particular keyword in the files name, it only needs to send the keyword within the 'name' tag and it MUST not be a full path.

The requester may also use the 'desc' to match keywords.

When simple keyword matching is not enough to efficiently search files, regular expressions (as defined in &xep0004;) can be used

&xep0059; defines a way of limiting the results of a request. There are some considerations to use &xep0059; along with this extension.

First, in &xep0059; it is defined that the requesting entity is the one that sets the limit of the number of items that can be replied. So it is up to the requesting entity to choose a sensible number.

Second, since this protocol defines a way of handling the directory tree structure by allowing files tags to be children of a directory tags, it becomes difficult to define items for &xep0059;. Therefore, when responding to a request using &xep0059;, the offering entity MUST NOT send directory tags with files as their children, file tags must be sent separately with their path (starting at the root shared folder) in their name attribute.

One obvious way to overcome the limitations of sending large stanzas in-band, is to transfer that information out of band. &xep0065; could be used for that purpose. It is hereby RECOMMENDED its implementation when the offering entity has a massive amount of files that would not be practical to advertise in-band.

It is further recommended that when using XEP-0065, the entire directory structure, along with all the files in the shared folder and subfolders, be exchanged in one single reply. Also, all the files attributes should be included. This is to avoid wasting bandwidth initiating out of band streams going back and forth.

As it was previously discussed, when requesting detailed information about a file, only the "name" and "size" attributes required, but it is strongly RECOMMENDED that the hash attribute be included, in order to reduce the chances of sending the wrong file. When requesting the file to be transferred using &xep0234;, the information that must be provided has to identify the file uniquely. It is then RECOMMENDED that when requesting a file, the full path of the file in the shared folder be included in the "name" attribute.