Re: Extending the roster item element

Florian Schmaus <[email protected]> Tue, 11 Nov 2025 18:56:33 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.network.jabber.standards-jig
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On 08/11/2025 16.59, Thilo Molitor wrote:
> I'm volunteering to write a XEP adding an <extensions/> element 
> alongside the
> <group/> element to allow arbitrary extensions for roster items.
Extending roster items is tempting and seems like an ideal fit at first, 
but there is a reason this isn't usually done (probably besides some 
internal deployments):

It's fragile, inefficient, and there are better alternatives.

There is a good summary of the problems that come up in the "Bookmarks 2 
extensibility" thread from Nov 2019. I'll try to come up with a link 
(assuming this is still accessible somehow).

Basically, things you have to keep in mind include: you have to avoid 
clients overriding unknown extensions when re-submitting things. You may 
end-up with having to resubmit extensions even though you did not modify 
them (which is ineffective). You may want to distinguish between 
extensions that have been synthesized by the server.

A dedicated PubSub node is in every case the better approach.

- Florian

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