Using AppEngine XMPP for Client Notifications

Question

I've been looking for a way to tell clients about expired objects and AppEngine's XMPP implementation seems really interesting because it's scalable, should be reliable and can contain up to 100kb of data.

1. But as I understand it, before a client can listen to messages, he should have a gmail account. That's very impractical.

2. Is there maybe a way to make temporary readonly XMPP accounts to use with this?

Answer 1

1. No this isn't true: you can have the AppEngine robot as contact over any Jabber/XMPP based networks.

Unless you are talking about the need for a GMAIL account to create an AppEngine robot... in which case YES you need to have a Google account.

Answer 2

In that situation, I would perform ajax calls every 5 minutes in example to check it.

It's easy to implement and the data exchanged can be reduced to the max (taking advantage of "fast query/response" bonifications of google-app).

Regards.

Answer 3

jldupont has it right for the first point : any JID should work :)

For the 2nd point, the only option is probably to set up your own server and allow anonymous access + temporary accounts.