Protocol — Telepathy D-Bus Interface Specification

# Interface Protocol

Interface Index (Compact) | Summary | Description | Methods | Properties

### Methods

IdentifyAccount | (a{sv}: Parameters) | → | s: Account_ID |
NormalizeContact | (s: Contact_ID) | → | s: Normalized_Contact_ID |

### Properties

Interfaces | as (DBus_Interface_List) | Read only | Immutable |
Parameters | a(susv) (Param_Spec_List) | Read only | Immutable |
ConnectionInterfaces | as (DBus_Interface_List) | Read only | Immutable |
RequestableChannelClasses | a(a{sv}as) (Requestable_Channel_Class_List) | Read only | Immutable |
VCardField | s | Read only | Immutable |
EnglishName | s | Read only | Immutable |
Icon | s | Read only | Immutable |
AuthenticationTypes | as (DBus_Interface_List) | Read only | Immutable |

Added in 0.19.10. (as stable API)

### Description

An object representing a protocol for which this ConnectionManager can create Connections.

Each Protocol object has the same well-known bus name as its parent ConnectionManager. Its object path is formed by taking the ConnectionManager's object path and appending '/', followed by the Protocol name with any hyphen/minus '-' converted to underscores '_'.

##### Rationale:

This is the same as the representation of protocol names in Account object paths, and in Connection object paths and bus names. For instance, telepathy-gabble and telepathy-salut would implement objects at `/org/freedesktop/Telepathy/ConnectionManager/gabble/jabber` and `/org/freedesktop/Telepathy/ConnectionManager/salut/local_xmpp`, respectively.

If the ConnectionManager has a `.manager` file, each Protocol's immutable properties must be represented in that file; the representation is described as part of the documentation for each property. For instance, a very simple ConnectionManager with one Protocol might be represented like this:

    [ConnectionManager]
    Interfaces=

    [Protocol example]
    Interfaces=
    ConnectionInterfaces=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Connection.Interface.Requests;
    param-account=s required
    param-password=s required secret
    RequestableChannelClasses=text;
    VCardField=x-example
    EnglishName=Example
    Icon=im-example
    AuthenticationTypes=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.Type.ServerTLSConnection;org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.Interface.SASLAuthentication;

    [text]
    org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.ChannelType s=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.Type.Text
    org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetHandleType u=1
    allowed=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetHandle;org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetID;

# Methods

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## IdentifyAccount (a{sv}: Parameters) → s: Account_ID

### Parameters

- Parameters — a{sv} (String_Variant_Map)
A set of parameters as would be provided to RequestConnection

### Returns

- Account_ID — s

An opaque string suitable for use as the account-specific part of an Account's object path. This is not necessarily globally unique, but should represent a "best-effort" identification of the account.

##### Rationale:

For a pathological case, consider a user signing in as 'me@example.com' with 'server' set to either jabber1.example.com or jabber2.example.com. Both of these should result in me@example.com being returned from this method, even if the user can actually be signed in to those two servers simultaneously.

Return a string which uniquely identifies the account to which the given parameters would connect.

##### Rationale:

For many protocols, this would return the well-known 'account' parameter. However, for IRC the returned string would be composed from the 'account' (i.e. nickname) and 'server' parameters. AccountManager implementations can use this to form the account-specific part of an Account's object path.

### Possible Errors

- Not Implemented
The IdentifyAccount method is not supported by this connection manager. The caller SHOULD fall back to deriving identification from the parameters.

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## NormalizeContact (s: Contact_ID) → s: Normalized_Contact_ID

### Parameters

- Contact_ID — s
The identifier of a contact in this protocol

### Returns

- Normalized_Contact_ID — s
The identifier of a contact in this protocol, normalized as much as possible

Attempt to normalize the given contact ID. Where possible, this SHOULD return the same thing that would be returned by InspectHandles(RequestHandles(CONTACT, [Contact_ID])) on a connected Connection.

If full normalization requires network activity or is otherwise impossible to do without a Connection, this method SHOULD perform a best-effort normalization.

##### Rationale:

One common example of a best-effort offline normalization differing from the ideal normalization is XMPP.

On XMPP, contacts' JIDs should normally have the resource removed during normalization, but for contacts in a MUC (chatroom), the resource is an integral part of the JID - so the contact JID alice@example.com/Empathy should normalize to alice@example.com, but the in-MUC JID wonderland@conference.example.com/Alice should normalize to itself.

While online, the connection manager has enough context to know which chatrooms the user is in, and can infer from that whether to remove resources, but the best-effort normalization performed while offline does not have this context, so the best that can be done is to remove the resource from all JIDs.

This method MAY simply raise NotImplemented on some protocols.

##### Rationale:

In link-local XMPP, you can't talk to someone who isn't present on your local network, so normalizing identifiers in advance is meaningless.

### Possible Errors

- Not Implemented
The NormalizeContact method is not supported by this connection manager. The caller MAY recover by using the contact ID as-is.

# Properties

Accessed using the org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties interface.
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## Interfaces — as (DBus_Interface_List)

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

A list of interfaces supported by this Protocol object.

This property should not be confused with ConnectionInterfaces, which refers to the interfaces of connections to this protocol.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file (as described as part of the ConnectionManager interface) MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file, using the key `Interfaces`. The corresponding value is a list of D-Bus interface names, each followed by a semicolon.

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## Parameters — a(susv) (Param_Spec_List)

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

The parameters which may be specified in the Parameters of an Account (or, for specialised applications which do not use the account manager, passed to RequestConnection). Some parameters are mandatory, and some parameters only make sense when registering new accounts with the server; see the Param_Spec documentation for more details.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file (as described as part of the ConnectionManager interface) MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file via keys of the form `param-p` and `default-p`, as documented in the ConnectionManager interface.

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## ConnectionInterfaces — as (DBus_Interface_List)

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

A list of interface names which might be in the Interfaces property of a Connection to this protocol. Whether a Connection will have all, some or none of these interfaces depends on server capabilities.

This property should not be confused with Interfaces.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file, using the key `ConnectionInterfaces`. The corresponding value is a list of D-Bus interface names, each followed by a semicolon.

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## RequestableChannelClasses — a(a{sv}as) (Requestable_Channel_Class_List)

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

A list of channel classes which might be requestable from a Connection to this protocol (i.e. they will, or might, appear in the Connection's RequestableChannelClasses property).

Whether a Connection will have all, some or none of these requestable channel classes depends on server capabilities; similarly, individual contacts are not guaranteed to support all of these channel classes.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file, using the key `RequestableChannelClasses`. The corresponding value is a list of opaque strings, each followed by a semicolon; each of those strings is the name of a group in the `.manager` file which represents a channel class.

The names of the groups representing channel classes are not significant, and MUST NOT be interpreted. When writing `.manager` files, authors MAY choose mnemonic group names, generate group names mechanically (e.g. with an incrementing integer), or use some combination of these.

Each group representing a channel class has a key `allowed` which is a list of D-Bus property names representing allowed parameters. Any other keys that do not contain a space MUST be ignored. Any key containing a space represents a fixed property; the key has the form "`propertyname type`", and the value is encoded in the same way as for the `default-p` keys described in the ConnectionManager documentation.

Connection managers that have channel classes whose fixed properties are not representable in this form SHOULD NOT have `.manager` files.

For instance, this `.manager` file could represent a connection manager that supports 1-1 Text messages and StreamedMedia audio calls:

    [Protocol jabber]
    param-account=s required
    param-password=s required
    RequestableChannelClasses=rcc0;rcc1;

    [rcc0]
    org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.ChannelType s=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.Type.Text
    org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetHandleType u=1
    allowed=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetHandle;org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetID;

    [rcc1]
    org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.ChannelType s=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.Type.StreamedMedia
    org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetHandleType u=1
    allowed=org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetHandle;org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.TargetID;org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Channel.Type.StreamedMedia.InitialAudio;

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## VCardField — s

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

The name of the most common vCard field used for this protocol's contact identifiers, normalized to lower case, or the empty string if there is no such field.

For example, this would be `x-jabber` for Jabber/XMPP (including Google Talk), or `tel` for the PSTN.

A more exhaustive list of addressable vCard fields can be found in the Protocol's Addressing interface's AddressableVCardFields.

It is not necessarily valid to interpret contacts' identifiers as values of this vCard field. For instance, telepathy-sofiasip supports contacts whose identifiers are of the form sip:jenny@example.com or tel:8675309, which would not normally both be represented by any single vCard field. Arbitrary handles/identifiers as vCard fields are represented through the Connection's Addressing.DRAFT contact attributes.

##### Rationale:

This is taken from Mission Control profiles as used on Maemo 5. One valid use of this field is to answer the question: given a contact's vCard containing an X-JABBER field, how can you communicate with the contact? By iterating through protocols looking for an x-jabber VCardField, one can build up a list of protocols that handle x-jabber, then offer the user a list of accounts for those protocols and/or the option to create a new account for one of those protocols.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file if it is non-empty, using the key `VCardField`. The corresponding value is a string, following the syntax of the "localestring" type from the Desktop Entry Specification.

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## EnglishName — s

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

The name of the protocol in a form suitable for display to users, such as "AIM" or "Yahoo!", or the empty string if none is available.

This is effectively in the C locale (international English); user interfaces requiring a localized protocol name SHOULD look one up in their own message catalog based on either the Telepathy Protocol name or this property, but SHOULD use this English version as a fallback if no translated version can be found.

##### Rationale:

Many protocols are named after a company or product which isn't translated in non-English locales. This also provides a fallback display name, for UIs with no prior knowledge of a particular protocol.

If this property's value is empty, clients MAY fall back to using the Telepathy Protocol name, possibly with its capitalization adjusted.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file if it is non-empty, using the key `EnglishName`. The corresponding value is a string, following the syntax of the "localestring" type from the Desktop Entry Specification.

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## Icon — s

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.

The name of an icon in the system's icon theme, such as "im-msn", or the empty string.

##### Rationale:

This can be used as a default if the Icon property is not set on an Account, or used by the AccountManager to choose a default icon if none is set during account creation.

If this property's value is empty, clients MAY fall back to generating a name based on the Protocol name.

Connection managers with a `.manager` file MUST cache this property in the protocol's section of the `.manager` file if it is non-empty, using the key `Icon`. The corresponding value is a string, following the syntax of the "localestring" type from the Desktop Entry Specification.

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## AuthenticationTypes — as (DBus_Interface_List)

Read only
This property is immutable which means that it can never change.
Added in 0.21.7.

A list of D-Bus interfaces which provide information as to what kind of authentication channels can possibly appear before the connection reaches the CONNECTED state.

These can either be channel types, or where the channel type isn't enough information to be useful, interfaces indicating a specific use of a channel type. For example, ServerTLSConnection channels are obviously about TLS certificates so the channel type would appear in this list. However, a ServerAuthentication channel type alone does not explain enough about the authentication type in use as it is merely a base for the channel interfaces that appear in said channels. In this case, CMs should use the value of the ServerAuthentication.AuthenticationMethod property in this list.

For example, if a protocol's AuthenticationTypes contains two values:

>     [ ...Channel.Type.ServerTLSConnection,
>       ...Channel.Interface.SASLAuthentication ]

This tells a client that before the connection status reached CONNECTED, a ServerTLSConnection could appear carrying a TLS certificate. It also tells the client that before the connection status reaches CONNECTED, a ServerAuthentication channel could also appear, where ServerAuthentication.AuthenticationMethod=SASLAuthentication. A hypothetical future Channel.Interface.Captcha interface would also appear in this list if the CM might require the user solve a captcha before connecting.