contacts: handle contacts metadata

Contacts use the End-to-End Encrypted Contacts Metadata to handle contact metadata. This is a new mechanism that complements the XMPP native “Roster” mechanism. The advantages are that contacts can be optionally end-to-end encrypted, preventing metadata from being accessible to the server, and that additional metadata can be associated with contacts and groups. The disadvantages are that most clients do not support it, so your contacts may not appear in them. Also, the server may need to access your contacts list to make decisions, for instance, to filter undesirable messages, which is not possible with end-to-end encrypted contacts (and no server currently supports pubsub contacts).

This feature is experimental and designed to reduce XMPP metadata exposure. For backward compatibility, use roster: manage an entity roster (note that the native roster cannot be end-to-end encrypted).

get

Retrieve the current contacts and their associated groups. By default, they are displayed in a table showing all metadata, along with an indicator of whether they are end-to-end encrypted.

Groups are displayed with their name, ID, and description (if available).

examples

Retrieve all contacts and their associated groups:

$ li contacts get

set

Add or replace a contact. By default, the contact metadata will be end-to-end encrypted, but you can store it in plaintext by using the --no-encrypt flag.

You can specify contact groups by ID (using -G, --group-ids GROUP_ID) or by name (using -g, --group-names GROUP_NAME). Both options can be provided multiple times.

examples

Add Louise as a new contact:

$ li contacts set -n Louise louise@example.org -g friends -g school