A comment about POE::Component::Jabber.

POE::Component::Jabber is in my opinion very good. The way version 1 handled network connections was a bit buggy, but version 2 is huge step forward and is really great.

POE::Component::Jabber gives you a flexible framework to build your XMPP client, but you will need to do a lot yourself. You are required to have read at least RFC3920 and RFC3921. In that reagrd, the documentation is very good.

For example to send a message you'd first create a POE::Filter::XML::Node object and then pass it to the output_handler event. Here's an example of how I send messages (send_message is my own event handler, but it sends to output_handler in it's last line):

package KM::POE::JabberClient;

use Filter::Template;
const XNode POE::Filter::XML::Node

use strict;

[...]

sub send_message {
    my ($kernel, $heap, %attrs) = @_[KERNEL, HEAP, ARG0..$#_];

    my $node = XNode->new('message');
    my @types = qw(chat error groupchat headline normal);
    $attrs{'type'} = $types[0] if exists $attrs{'type'} and
                                  !grep { $attrs{'type'} eq $_ } @type
+s;
    for my $i (qw(subject body thread)) {
        my $k = delete $attrs{$i};
        $node->insert_tag($i)->data($k) if $k;
    }
    $node->insert_attrs([%attrs]) if %attrs;
    $kernel->post($heap->{'session'}, 'output_handler', $node);
}
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To receive messages (and other input) in your XMPP client you'd create your own event handler. It will receive a POE::Filter::XML::Node object that you can do whatever you want with. Example from my code:

sub input_hook {
    my ($kernel, $heap, $node) = @_[KERNEL, HEAP, ARG0];

    my $name = $node->name;
    my $users = $heap->{'users'};

    if ($name eq 'presence') {
        my $jid = Net::XMPP::JID->new($node->attr('from'));
        my $full = $jid->GetJID('full');
        my $base = $jid->GetJID('base');
        my $type = $node->attr('type') || 'available';
        return if $full !~ /\@/;

        # do some stuff with tracking online/offline users etc
    } elsif ($name eq 'iq' and $node->attr('type') eq 'result') {
        my $kids = $node->get_children();
        my $res = $kids->[0];
        if ($res->attr('xmlns') eq 'jabber:iq:roster') {
            for my $kid (@{$res->get_sort_children()}) {
                my $jid = $kid->attr('jid');
                $users->{$jid} = {} if !exists $users->{$jid};
            }
        }
    }
}
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The above code does not handle incoming messags (since I wasn't interested in these), but read the mentioned RFC and you'll see what you'll need.

Good luck!