Glossary
A
A unique identifier for an application generated automatically upon application creation. You can have more than one application in your account. Each application will have a unique application ID in this case.
A specific authentication mechanism integrated into the QuickBlox user authentication system. QuickBlox provides several authentication providers such as login/email and password authentication, social authentication, and custom identity provider authentication that you can use in your client application to allow users to log in.
The process of proving you are who you say you are. In other words, to access QuickBlox APIs you need to authenticate your application with the QuickBlox server. When the authenticity is verified, the server responds to the request.
Granting an authenticated party the permission to do something using server API. It specifies what data the user is allowed to access and what they can do with that data.
B
A specific entity for a file in the QuickBlox system. Consists of file metadata stored in QuickBlox database and binary data stored as a single entity in the cloud storage (S3 bucket in case of AWS deployment). Blobs are typically images, audio, or other multimedia objects. Learn more about blob here.
A bidirectional HTTP-based transport protocol that creates a long-lived TCP connection between the client and server.
C
The function is used for query parameters only. It comes from the CGI specification describing how data should be encoded/decoded between the web server and application; used for escaping a URL value in the query string. All characters that don't fall into the ALPHA, DIGIT, '_', '-', '.' and ' ' character set get escaped.
D
A user-friendly interface that enables you to create new apps and manage your existing apps from here. It provides an at-a-glance view of QuickBlox modules. Get your application credentials (Application ID, Authorization Key, Authorization Secret, and Account Key) from here to launch the framework.
Represents an entity for a chat within the QuickBlox system. Each dialog has a unique dialog ID generated automatically by the server after dialog creation. There are 3 dialog types: private, group, and public. Learn more about QuickBlox dialog types here.
E
An entity for a push notification event within the QuickBlox system. Each event has a unique event ID generated automatically by the server after event creation.
A unique identifier of the user in the integrated external system, used for cross-referencing. For example, a user has an internal user ID within the QuickBlox system and external ID, provided by the integrated external (client) system. When an API call with reference to the user has to be submitted, the user can be referenced by either internal or external identifiers.
H
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets the standard for the confidentiality of protected health information (PHI).
A secure chat solution for healthcare. It enables telemedicine apps to deliver open, comfortable communication to patients and protect their sensitive information by implementing all the necessary security measures.
In cryptography, an HMAC (sometimes expanded as either keyed-hash message authentication code or hash-based message authentication code) is a specific type of message authentication code (MAC) involving a cryptographic hash function and secret cryptographic key. It may be used to simultaneously verify both the data integrity and authentication of a message, as with any MAC. Any cryptographic hash function, such as SHA-256 or SHA-3, may be used in the calculation of an HMAC; the resulting MAC algorithm is termed HMAC-X, where X is the hash function used (e.g. HMAC-SHA256 or HMAC-SHA3). The cryptographic strength of the HMAC depends upon the cryptographic strength of the underlying hash function, the size of its hash output, and the size, and quality of the key.
I
A service that stores and verifies user identity. Identity Providers (IdP) are typically cloud-hosted services, and they often work with single sign-on (SSO) providers to authenticate users.
K
A simple database that uses a simple key/value method for data storage. You can address your values by special identifier - key. The key is a string that will identify your value in storage. Value can be a bool, number, or string type.
M
A multi-point video routing topology where every participant sends its media stream to each participant and receives it from them.
Represents a message entity within the QuickBlox system. Each message has a unique message ID generated automatically by the server after message creation. Messages can contain any data - arrays, objects, numbers, and strings.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard extending the format of email messages by supporting text in character sets other than ASCII, and attachments such as audio, video, images, and application programs.
P
A computer networking architecture in which all participating peers have equal privileges and share the workload. Peer-to-peer differs from a client-server network architecture, where multiple client nodes connect to centralized servers for services.
Q
An application programming interface (API) enabling data transmission between the application and QuickBlox system. It consists of different resources representing data associated with chat, push notifications, users, custom objects, etc. activities. It allows the application to interact with the QuickBlox system over standard HTTP protocols. Learn more about QuickBlox API basics form here.
A software development kit (SDK) is a set of software development tools that allow the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework. In other words, it is the interface built on top of the QuickBlox API. It allows the application to interact with the QuickBlox system. Designed for platforms such as iOS, Android, Web, React Native, and Flutter.
S
A token is a unique string identifying a user or application and providing temporary access to QuickBlox APIs. The token is valid only within the session it was generated. Learn more about the session token from here here.
Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) is a video routing topology allowing WebRTC clients to send their encoded video stream to the centralized media server where it is then forwarded/routed to the other WebRTC clients. The SFU allows for receiving multiple media streams and then decide which of these media streams should be forwarded to which WebRTC clients.
T
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used to establish a long-lived, stream-oriented connection between two entities, running on top of Internet Protocol (IP). Sometimes the application fails to maintain a long-lived TCP connection between entities due to the nature of the device or network. If this is the case, it is desirable to use an alternative connection method that emulates the behavior of a long-lived TCP connection, for example, Websocket or Bosh.
A stream-oriented socket enabling reliable IP communication using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
U
Represents an entity for a user within the QuickBlox system. Each user has a unique user ID generated automatically by the server after dialog creation.
W
A transport protocol defined by a long-lived, bidirectional connection between the server and client that takes place over a TCP connection.
X
An Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, a set of open technologies for instant messaging, presence, multi-party chat, voice and video calls, collaboration, lightweight middleware, content syndication, and generalized routing of XML data. Learn more about XMPP from here.
Updated 10 months ago