ofarchiver 0.43

An HTML archive generator for chat rooms on an Openfire instant messaging server.

Introduction

OfArchiver generates HTML archives of chat rooms on an Openfire instant messaging server.

Example usage is as follows:

from ofarchiver import OfArchiver

ofa = OfArchiver()
for room in ofa.get_rooms():
    ofa.gen_archive(room)

A script called ofarchiver is also installed, which takes advantage of the multiprocessing Python module to speed up archive generation on installations with multiple chat rooms. It can serve as a cron job to generate archives at a given interval.

Requirements

• An Openfire server with chat rooms (tested with 3.7.0).

• MySQL as the Openfire database (tested with 5.0).

• A web server (tested with Apache 2.2 and its mod_autoindex module).

• Python 2.6 or higher (available for RHEL/CentOS 5 in EPEL as python26).

Installation

• With pip:

  sudo pip install OfArchiver

• With easy_install:

  sudo easy_install OfArchiver

• From source:

  git clone http://github.com/egnyte/ofarchiver
  cd ofarchiver
  python setup.py build
  sudo python setup.py install

Configuration

Openfire

The Monitoring Service Openfire plugin must be installed and configured.

1. Log into the Openfire admin panel and select the Plugins tab.

2. Install the Monitoring Service plugin.

3. Select the Server tab, then the Archiving subtab.

4. Under Archiving Settings, enable Archive group chats.

OfArchiver

An ofarchiver.ini configuration file is included which must be copied to one of the following locations (listed in the order in which they are checked):

• /usr/local/etc

• /etc

• The user’s home directory ($HOME)

It consists of the following sections (mandatory options have a **):

main

basedir **

The base directory in which to generate the HTML archive.

confserver **

The name of the Openfire conference server.

db **

The type of database used by Openfire (only mysql is currently supported).

debug

Whether to enable debugging statements.

logfile

A file in which to log informational and/or debugging messages.

org

The name of the organization running Openfire.

rooms

A list of rooms for which to generate archives.

db

hostname **

The hostname of the MySQL server.

username **

A MySQL user, either Openfire’s or one created just for OfArchiver (only SELECT privileges on the ofMessageArchive table is needed).

password **

The password for the MySQL user above.

database **

The MySQL database used by Openfire.

colors

enabled

Whether to enable colors to more easily differentiate chat room members.

names

A list of colors to choose from.

Web Server

A web server with automatic directory index generation is required to view the HTML archive. Here is a sample configuration for Apache, with /var/www/html/ofarchive as the archive base directory:

<Directory /var/www/html/ofarchive>
  Options +Indexes
  IndexOptions FancyIndexing
  IndexOrderDefault Descending Date
</Directory>

Adding authentication and encryption is highly recommended.

Thanks

• Egnyte for allowing and encouraging me to release this software.