Selected hooks description

This is a brief documentation for a few selected hooks. Though hooks & handlers differ in what they are there to do, it is not necessary to describe them all, because the mechanism is general. The following is meant to give you the idea of how hooks work, what they are used for and the various purposes they can serve.

user_send_packet

ejabberd_hooks:run(user_send_packet, Server,
                   [FromJID, ToJID, Stanza])

This hook is run in ejabberd_c2s after the user sends a packet. Some rudimentary verification of the stanza is done once it is received from the socket:

  • if present, the from attribute of the stanza is checked against the identity of the user whose session the process in question serves; if the identity does not match the contents of the attribute, an error is returned,
  • the recipient JID (to attribute) format is verified.

The hook is not run for stanzas which do not pass these basic validity checks. Neither are such stanzas further processed by the server.

This hook won't be called for stanzas arriving from a user served by a federated server (i.e. on a server-to-server connection handled by ejabberd_s2s) intended for a user served by the relevant ejabberd instance.

It is handled by the following modules:

  • mod_caps - detects and caches capability information sent with certain messages for later use

  • mod_carboncopy - if the packet being sent is a message, it forwards it to all the user's resources which have carbon copying enabled

  • mod_event_pusher_http - if configured, sends selected messages to an external http service

  • mod_mam - stores outgoing messages in an archive

  • mod_ping - upon reception of every message from the client, this module (re)starts a timer; if nothing more is received from the client within 60 seconds, it sends an IQ ping, to which the client should reply - which starts another timer.

user_receive_packet

ejabberd_hooks:run(user_receive_packet, Server,
                   [Jid, From, To, FixedPacket])

The hook is run just before a packet received by server is sent to the user.

Prior to sending, the packet is verified against any relevant privacy lists (the mechanism is described in XEP-0016). The privacy list mechanism itself is not mandatory and requires mod_privacy to be configured; otherwise all stanzas are allowed to pass.

This hook won't run for stanzas which are destined to users of a different XMPP domain served by a federated server, connection to which is handled by ejabberd_s2s.

It is handled by the following modules:

  • mod_caps - detects and caches capability information sent with certain messages for later use

  • mod_carboncopy - if the received packet is a message, it forwards it to all the user's resources which have carbon copying enabled

filter_packet

ejabberd_hooks:run_fold(filter_packet,
                        {OrigFrom, OrigTo, OrigPacket}, [])

This hook is run by mongoose_router_global when the packet is being routed by ejaberd_router:route/3. It is in fact the first call made within the routing procedure. If a function hooked in to filter_packet returns drop, the packet is not processed.

The ejaberd_router:route/3 fun is the most general function used to route stanzas across the entire cluster and its calls are scattered all over ejabberd code. ejabberd_c2s calls it after it receives a packet from ejabberd_receiver (i.e. the socket) and multiple modules use it for sending replies and errors.

As seen in the example, the handlers take no arguments. The accumulator is the packet which may or may not be filtered out (in case the handler chain returns drop) or modified.

Note that this hook is run with ejabberd_hooks:run_fold/3, not the usual and already mentioned ejabberd_hooks:run_fold/4. The ternary variant doesn't take the XMPP domain argument and hence it's not possible to register per-domain handlers for this hook. Keep that in mind when registering the handlers and appropriately use ejabberd_hooks:add/4 instead of ejabberd_hooks:add/5.

offline_message_hook

ejabberd_hooks:run(offline_message_hook,
                   Server,
                   [From, To, Packet])

ejabberd_sm runs this hook once it determines that a routed stanza is a message and while it ordinarily could be delivered, no resource (i.e. device or desktop client application) of its recipient is available online for delivery.

The hook is first handled by mod_offline, which should store that message in a persistent way until the recipient comes online and the message can be successfully delivered. The handler in mod_offline stores the message and returns stop, which terminates the call and no more hook handlers are called.

If the mod_offline handler fails to store the message, we should notify the user that the message could not be stored. To this end, there is another handler registered, but with a greater sequence number, so that it is called after mod_offline. If mod_offline fails, ejabberd_sm:bounce_offline_message is called and the user gets their notification.

remove_user

ejabberd_hooks:run(remove_user, Server, [User, Server])

remove_user is run by ejabberd_auth - the authentication module - when a request is made to remove the user from the database of the server. This one is rather complex, since removing a user requires many cleanup operations: mod_last removes last activity information (xep 0012); mod_mam removes the user's message archive; mod_muc_light quits multi-user chat rooms; mod_offline deletes the user's offline messages; mod_privacy removes the user's privacy lists; mod_private removes the user's private xml data storage; mod_pubsub unsubscribes from publish/subsribe channels; and mod_roster removes the user's roster from database.

node_cleanup

ejabberd_hooks:run(node_cleanup, [Node])

node_cleanup is run by a mongooseim_cleaner process which subscribes to nodedown messages. Currently the hook is run inside a global transaction (via global:trans/4).

The job of this hook is to remove all processes registered in Mnesia. MongooseIM uses Mnesia to store processes through which messages are then routed - like user sessions or server-to-server communication channels - or various handlers, e.g. IQ request handlers. Those must obviously be removed when a node goes down, and to do this the modules ejabberd_local, ejabberd_s2s, ejabberd_sm and mod_bosh register their handlers with this hook.

Number of retries for this transaction is set to 1 which means that in some situations the hook may be run on more than one node in the cluster, especially when there is little garbage to clean after the dead node. Setting retries to 0 is not good decision as it was observed that in some setups it may abort the transaction on all nodes.

session_opening_allowed_for_user

ejabberd_hooks:run_fold(session_opening_allowed_for_user,
                        Server,
                        allow, [JID]).

This hook is run after authenticating when user sends the IQ opening a session. Handler function are expected to return:

  • allow if a given JID is allowed to open a new sessions (the default)
  • deny if the JID is not allowed but other handlers should be run
  • {stop, deny} if the JID is not allowed but other handlers should not be run

In the default implementation the hook is not used, built-in user control methods are supported elsewhere. This is the perfect place to plug in custom security control.

other hooks

  • adhoc_local_commands
  • adhoc_local_items
  • amp_check_condition
  • amp_check_packet
  • amp_determine_strategy
  • amp_verify_support
  • anonymous_purge_hook
  • c2s_broadcast_recipients
  • c2s_filter_packet
  • c2s_presence_in
  • c2s_stream_features
  • c2s_unauthenticated_iq
  • can_access_room
  • caps_add
  • caps_update
  • disco_info
  • disco_local_features
  • disco_local_identity
  • disco_local_items
  • disco_sm_features
  • disco_sm_identity
  • disco_sm_items
  • ejabberd_ctl_process
  • filter_local_packet
  • filter_room_packet
  • forget_room
  • host_config_update
  • is_muc_room_owner
  • join_room
  • leave_room
  • local_send_to_resource_hook
  • mam_archive_id
  • mam_archive_message
  • mam_archive_size
  • mam_get_behaviour
  • mam_get_prefs
  • mam_lookup_messages
  • mam_muc_archive_id
  • mam_muc_archive_message
  • mam_muc_archive_size
  • mam_muc_get_behaviour
  • mam_muc_get_prefs
  • mam_muc_lookup_messages
  • mam_muc_purge_multiple_messages
  • mam_muc_purge_single_message
  • mam_muc_remove_archive
  • mam_muc_set_prefs
  • mam_purge_multiple_messages
  • mam_purge_single_message
  • mam_remove_archive
  • mam_set_prefs
  • muc_room_pid
  • node_cleanup
  • offline_groupchat_message_hook
  • offline_message_hook
  • presence_probe_hook
  • privacy_check_packet
  • privacy_get_user_list
  • privacy_iq_get
  • privacy_iq_set
  • privacy_updated_list
  • remove_user
  • resend_offline_messages_hook
  • roster_get
  • roster_get_jid_info
  • roster_get_subscription_lists
  • roster_get_versioning_feature
  • roster_in_subscription
  • roster_out_subscription
  • roster_process_item
  • s2s_stream_features
  • session_cleanup
  • sm_register_connection_hook
  • sm_remove_connection_hook
  • unset_presence_hook
  • user_receive_packet
  • user_send_packet
  • user_sent_keep_alive