determine when user comes online for messenger

zulfiqarsyed

Hi all, On my website, I want to show if some one with messenger email address such as "[email protected]" comes online or if the user is offline? Is there a messenger api for that or is there a general api that would work with yahoo, icq, aim accounts as well? Please help. My site has mixture of code in asp3 and asp.net thanks

6 Replies

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chrishornberger23y ago
Exactly. They do change alot and Trillian is pretty good about keep up with it, but I don't envy them for it.
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james23y ago
Take a look at these news articles http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5082812.html?tag=nl http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5066412.html?tag=nl IP Packet capturing is a perfect way to decipher the current protocols, but don't be surprised if they change on a regular basis just to keep us from having too much access :)
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katana23y ago
Now, Microsoft has some code on MSDN for communicating w/ Messenger though. Otherwise, it is simply learning the protocol, you would just open Messenger, and watch the protocol w/ a packet sniffer. It is possible, not easy though.
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james23y ago
Greg, What I was getting at using the reference to Trillian is that Yahoo and Microsoft actively try to stop you from doing what you're wanting to do... so I'm fairly sure they won't be releasing and SDK to do it. -James
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zulfiqarsyed23y ago
Thanks for fast reponse. I don't think Trillian has a .net sdk that I could use. I was looking for code sample or .net library that I could plug into my code and call a method with user's email address. I just want to determine if the user is online or not. thanks again...
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james23y ago
You're opening up quite a can of worms my friend. There are applications out there that try to interact with the different IMs, such as Trillian. Apparently Microsoft and Yahoo are quite threatened by those types of services (most of which are free) and have actively taken steps to prevent interaction between their IM and third party applications. This would be fairly simple to accomplish from a programming standpoint, but the business/legal ramifications are preventing most inter-service integration. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. -James
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