determine when user comes online for messenger

Question

Hi all On my website I want to show if some one with messenger email address such as youraddress@hotmail.com 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

chrishornberger · Answer

Exactly. They do change alot and Trillian is pretty good about keep up with it but I don't envy them for it.

james · Answer

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 :)

katana · Answer

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.

james · Answer

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

zulfiqarsyed · Answer

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...

james · Answer

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