JID (Jabber)

A JID or Jabber Identity (also called a Jabber ID) is the username or account name used to access a Jabber account.

They usually take the form user@domain/resource in a similar way to email addresses.

The resource component enables a user to contact a particular access point logged into each account, e.g. user@domain.com/work and user@domain.com/home. The resource component is not necessary in order to contact a Jabber user.

Transports, agents, and other automated parts of the Jabber network may not have a user part to the JID. A common example would be the AIM transport, where the transport itself has a JID along the lines of aim.domain.com, and contacts on AIM would appear as screenname@aim.domain.com.

In a similar way to Sendmail, accessing other protocols is possible with Jabber transports. Users can then contact from a client such as MSN Messenger using the JID form user%msn.com@msn.jabberserver.com.

Limitations

Jabber usernames are limited to 1023 characters and the following characters are not allowed:

• @ ("at" sign)
• : (colon)
• ' (single quote)
• " (double quote)
• < (open angle bracket) and > (close angle bracket)
• & (ampersand)
• \r (carriage return), \n (newline), \t (tab) and any other control character
• white space