[Serusers] Finding offline users.

[Jamey Hicks]

serusers at jtoga.org wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to have a caller (eg sender of invite) be able to detect 
> the difference between a user that is 'offline' and one that really 
> doesn't exist.   Current cfg methods allow for doing a lookup in the 
> location table, but if the target isn't there - then a 404 is returned.
>
> I think what I would like to do is then check the subscriber 
> table....what is the best way to accomplish this?
>
There are several options:

1) use the group module, add all subscribers to a group, and use the 
is_user_in() function in ser.cfg.

2) use the CPL module, and install default and/or customized CPL scripts 
that handle calls differently for subscribers who are offline vs 
non-subscribers

3) I wanted to do something similar, without the administrative overhead 
of creating a group and remembering to put everyone in the group, so I 
wrote a new function in uri_db: does_to_uri_exist.  This is just like 
does_uri_exist except it does not check authorization data. 

It's not in CVS but I can post a patch or commit it to CVS.  I needed 
something like it for pals.internet2.edu, which handles register, 
subscribe, publish, notify, invite, bye, message, etc, messages for 
subscribers from different domains, but is supposed to be a transparent 
proxy for non-subscriber URI's, some of which might belong to the same 
domains.  I guess what we have there is a multi-domain cascading registrar.

Jamey