JXTA in a Nutshell

Chapter 15. The JXTA ID Specification

The JXTA protocols often need to refer to peers, peergroups, pipes, and other JXTA resources. These references are presented in the protocols as JXTA IDs. JXTA IDs uniquely identify specific peergroups, peers, pipes, content, and service instances. With a JXTA ID, you know that you have an unambiguous reference to the various JXTA entities. Currently, there are six types of JXTA entities that have defined JXTA ID types:

• Peergroups

• Peers

• Pipes

• Content

• Module classes

• Module specifications

Additional JXTA ID types may be defined in the future.

JXTA IDs are normally presented as URNs. URNs are a form of URI that " . . . are intended to serve as persistent, location-independent, resource identifiers.” Like other forms of URIs, JXTA IDs are presented as text. See IETF RFC 2141 [RFC2141] for more information about URNs.

Format of a JXTA ID URN

A JXTA ID is a standard URN in the JXTA ID namespace. JXTA ID URNs are identified by the namespace identifier jxta. Each JXTA ID URN also contains an ID format keyword. The ID format keyword indicates how the ID was created and may also allow JXTA bindings to extract additional information from the ID.

Currently, two defined ID formats are identified by the jxta and uuid keywords. It is possible to define additional JXTA ID formats in order to refer to resources within JXTA and to bridge to other technologies.

The format specifications in Example 15-1 use the ABNF syntax as defined in IETF ...