---
labels:
- Stage-Stable
summary: Redirect long messages to built-in pastebin
---

# Introduction

Pastebins are used very often in IM, especially in chat rooms. You have
a long log or command output which you need to send to someone over IM,
and don't want to fill their message window with it. Put it on a
pastebin site, and give them the URL instead, simple.

Not for everyone... no matter how hard you try, people will be unaware,
or not care. They may also be too lazy to visit a pastebin. This is
where mod_pastebin comes in!

# Details

When someone posts to a room a "large" (the actual limit is
configurable) message, Prosody will intercept the message and convert it
to a URL pointing to a built-in pastebin server. The URLs are randomly
generated, so they can be considered for most purposes to be private,
and cannot be discovered by people who are not in the room.

**Note:** mod_pastebin cannot read, and therefore does not act on, end-to-end
encrypted messages (e.g. messages using OMEMO).

# Usage

To set up mod_pastebin for MUC rooms it **must** be explicitly loaded,
as in the example below - it won't work when loaded globally, as that
will only load it onto normal virtual hosts.

For example:

    Component "conference.example.com" "muc"
        modules_enabled = { "pastebin" }

Pastes will be available by default at
`http://<your-prosody>:5280/pastebin/` by default.

Ports and path can be changed with [HTTP
settings](https://prosody.im/doc/http), for example like:

``` {.lua}
  http_paths = {
    pastebin = "/$host-paste";
  }
```

# Discovery

The line and character tresholds are advertised in
[service discovery][xep-0030] like this:

``` {.xml}
<iq id="791d37e8-86d8-45df-adc2-9bcb17c45cb7" type="result" xml:lang="en" from="prosody@conference.prosody.im">
  <query xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info">
    <identity type="text" name="Prosŏdy IM Chatroom" category="conference"/>
    <feature var="http://jabber.org/protocol/muc"/>
    <feature var="https://modules.prosody.im/mod_pastebin"/>
    <x xmlns="jabber:x:data" type="result">
      <field type="hidden" var="FORM_TYPE">
        <value>http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#roominfo</value>
      </field>
      <field label="Title" type="text-single" var="muc#roomconfig_roomname">
        <value>Prosŏdy IM Chatroom</value>
      </field>
      <!-- etc... -->
      <field type="text-single" var="{https://modules.prosody.im/mod_pastebin}max_lines">
        <value>12</value>
      </field>
      <field type="text-single" var="{https://modules.prosody.im/mod_pastebin}max_characters">
        <value>1584</value>
      </field>
    </x>
  </query>
</iq>
```

# Configuration

  Option                    Description
  ------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  pastebin_threshold        Maximum length (in characters) of a message that is allowed to skip the pastebin. (default 500 characters)
  pastebin_line_threshold   The maximum number of lines a message may have before it is sent to the pastebin. (default 4 lines)
  pastebin_trigger          A string of characters (e.g. "!paste ") which if detected at the start of a message, always sends the message to the pastebin, regardless of length. (default: not set)
  pastebin_ignore           A string of characters (e.g. "!nopaste") which if detected **anywhere** within a message, won't send the message to the pastebin
  pastebin_expire_after     Number of hours after which to expire (remove) a paste, defaults to 24. Set to 0 to store pastes permanently on disk.
  pastebin_html_preview     Whether to include a formatted preview in pastes (default: true)

# Compatibility

  ------- ----------------------
  trunk   Works as of 25-06-13
  13.0    Works
  0.12    Works
  ------- ----------------------

# Todo

-   Maximum paste length
-   Web interface to submit pastes?