I have been looking for a way to build an online app that can communicate with other users of the app in real time. I have a few general questions about some of these great projects and was wondering if anyone could explain a few things.
First, I was wondering about the latency of a message sent from one XMPP client through and OpenFire server to another client. Is this done nearly instantaneously, or do the clients typically poll for new messages?
Also, I know that OpenFire supports plugins. I am not sure to what extent these plugins can operate. Can these plugins be used to analyze and modify the messages, block or redirect them, react to them, create new messages, and persist local data. Is it possible to cross chatroom domains from within these plugins and can they operate at an application level. Essentially, I was wondering if it were possible to customize the server to work as a specialized application server. I know this sounds strange, but the underlying protocol offers a great deal of the things that I am looking for to begin with, such as transport security, LDAP integration, etc.
If I am barking up the wrong tree here, feel free to say so. If I am going to do this amount of coding, I want to start off on the right foot. I am simply exploring options at this point, so feel free to direct me elsewhere if this system is not intended for these purposes.
Thanks for reading,
Dan