use jabber to implement a chat room feature

Question

I have a existing web app and a iphone app for a closed user community. I want to add chat room feature for users to chat with each other.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Is it a good choice to use jabber on the backend to handle chats/chatroom? If yes, can you point me to some tutorials?

My users won't need to know anything about jabber. My chat system won't allow users from gtalk or other jabber-compatible to connect.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Jabber is a good choice indeed. You could have a look at ejabberd, a popular jabber server.

For implementing your "private" jabber chat room, you can easily write "modules" for ejabberd that would enforce the "private chat rooms" e.g. enforcing access rights etc.