MSN contact grab web service is finally up

Torrential Web Dev

Friday, October 20. 2006

Posted by Jonathan Street in PHP Programming at 23:18

Comments (16)
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MSN contact grab web service is finally up

Well it has been quite a while since I posted about my intention to create a web service for my MSN contact grabbing script. Unfortunately other commitments have meant I haven't been able to spend any time on this project until today. I've quickly thrown the backend and a class to interact with it together and now here it is.

This entry is one of a series looking at fetching contacts. For a summary of all the important facts, a demo and the download link please view the MSN contact grab page in the scripts section.



I've put together a class that can handle the interaction with the web service and this can be downloaded from here. I've tried to keep it as simple as possible. Hopefully anyone will be able to use the service even if their PHP configuration is very limiting. If you can access a remote url then the class should work.

It is simple enough to use

<?php

require "msn_webservice_user.class.php";

$msn_ws = new MSN_contacts;

$results = $msn_ws->qGrab("YOUR USERNAME HERE", "YOUR PASSWORD HERE");



echo "<table border='1'>\n";
$x = 0;
while ($x < count($results[0])) {
        echo "<tr><td>\n";
        echo $results[0][$x];
        echo "</td><td>\n";
        echo $results[1][$x];
        echo "</td></tr>\n";
       
        $x++;

}
echo "</table>";

?>


In the above example all we are doing is grabbing a contact list and displaying a table containing the email and screen name for each contact.

At the moment the web service only works for the MSN contact list but if people are having problems with one of the other services I'll look at expanding the service.

Although this approach has advantages over running the class on your servers it is far less secure so if you are able to run the msn contact grabbing class on your own server I would strongly recommend that you do so.

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Privacy when using the MSN contacts web service
In my rush to get the announcement out about the web service finally being up I completely forgot to mention an important point. Namely that if you do use the service then the MSN login details for any users of the service will pass through my server. I
Weblog: Web App Development
Tracked: Oct 23, 16:09
Update to msn messenger contact grab class
I've now updated the class I wrote to grab the contact list from MSN messenger. The new script should now fail 'gracefully' if there are any problems. This doesn't help anyone whose server was unable to run the original script (there is still the we
Weblog: Web App Development
Tracked: Nov 17, 19:24
Source code for the contacts web service
There have been a couple of requests for the source code to the msn contacts grab web service so that anyone interested can run the web service on one server they have access to while querying it from other servers they use. This sounds like a good idea
Weblog: Web App Development
Tracked: Nov 27, 21:07
Update to the MSN contact grabbing script
There have been a handful of people contact me recently stating that the MSNM contact fetching script doesn't work, or works poorly, with email addresses other than @hotmail.com. Addresses ending in @hotmail.co.uk, @hotmail.fr or none hotmail addresses w
Weblog: Torrential Web Dev
Tracked: May 12, 11:16
Release Early, Release Often - Yeah Right . . .
For a couple of weeks now I've been intending to release two new tools for this site. For one week they've been live on the site (though not linked to) and still I haven't mentioned them. It could be said I'm procrastinating. This is a shame because
Weblog: Torrential Web Dev
Tracked: Jun 20, 22:27
MSN Contacts web service should be fully available again
The web service for fetching contacts from MSN messenger / Windows Live Messenger has been hit by a series of problems over the past few days. First I hit the bandwidth limit for the account used to host the service. Next, the server used was hit by a D
Weblog: Torrential Web Dev
Tracked: Mar 11, 08:10

Comments
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Hi Jonathan,

Thank you very very much for your Msn Service. At least I can have it working on my limited hosting...

Thank you very much for your effort!!
Hasta luego!!!!!
#1 Raúl (Homepage) on 2006-10-23 22:00 (Reply)
what is the difference between
msn_contact_grab.zip
and
msn_contacts_webservice.zip
#2 ramonskie (Homepage) on 2006-10-24 15:22 (Reply)
msn_contact_grab is the class that actually interacts directly with the MSN servers and fetches the contacts.

Some people are not able to use this class however becuase it relies on sockets which not all web hosting providers enable.

msn_contacts_webservice is an alternative to interactly with MSN directly and should work even if sockets are disabled. It works by using my server as a proxy to fetch the contacts from MSN.

I hope that clears things up and you find the solution which is right for you.
#2.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2006-10-24 15:40 (Reply)
owkee i get it
but this script still logs your msn out right??
#3 ramonskie on 2006-10-25 10:32 (Reply)
Yes, sadly it logs you out of msn.
#3.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2006-10-25 10:42 (Reply)
Hi the there Jonathan!

And thank you for the efford on this development.

I wonder if by any chance is it possible for you to release the version of these file too:

http://jmstreet.info/tools/msn_contact_grab/webservice.php

because if you do so I can put this file on one of my severs that allows the connection and use it on others that don't allow it ...

Thank you once again
#4 Merlin on 2006-11-27 00:26 (Reply)
Hi jonathan.

I agree with merlin.

I wonder if by any chance is it possible for you to release the version of these file too:

http://jmstreet.info/tools/msn_contact_grab/webservice.php

For us to be able to use it without having to rely on ur server.

Thank you very much.
#5 shauki (Homepage) on 2006-11-27 19:02 (Reply)
Sounds like a good idea.

I've posted the code.

http://jmstreet.info/archives/61-Source-code-for-the-contacts-web-service.html
#5.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2006-11-27 21:13 (Reply)
I'm now trying to implent the remote one in my website for users, but there's a problem: When the request starts, the server will take all available execution time and then returns an error. However, if you click in Windows Live Messenger at "Sign in again", it suddenly returns all data. This problem also occurs at your preview. Is this my fault because I don't use @live.com/@hotmail.com but @ralphje.nl? Or is this an error from you or Microsoft?
#6 ralphje (Homepage) on 2007-03-27 15:42 (Reply)
Hi

This has been mentioned as a potential problem elsewhere and I haven't had a chance to investigate it yet.

The script does log you out of MSN messenger if you are already logged in but I'm not sure why logging in again would help this script.

In summary I haven't tested this with a non hotmail email address so it is possible that this would create problems. If this is true though it doesn't mean it is your fault, the script should be able to handle any passport registered email address.
#6.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2007-03-27 16:11 (Reply)
how can i trust that you are not saving the account access in the script {http://jmstreet.info/tools/msn_contact_grab/webservice.php}?!!
i really wonder how people trust using this script, with all my respect but if i can't see what {webservice.php} is doing then i won't be able to use it, in all the ways, thank you for your share and i wish that you will open the source of the webservice.php script so people can develop over it and use it!
#7 Ma'moon on 2007-04-07 01:45 (Reply)
Hi Ma'moon

You are absolutely right to be concerned about how personal data is protected. I'm glad that you have already found the post where I released the source code - http://torrentialwebdev.com/blog/archives/61-Source-code-for-the-contacts-web-service.html

You may also be interested in this post where I discuss privacy more directly - http://torrentialwebdev.com/blog/archives/45-Privacy-when-using-the-MSN-contacts-web-service.html

I've tried to be as transparent as possible in the code I'm using and how I'm handling the data to reassure anyone considering using the webservice.
#7.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2007-04-07 13:18 (Reply)
sorry....

if i want only contact on line??

where i change?

sorry for my english
#8 stanislao (Homepage) on 2007-10-30 16:09 (Reply)
Hi

The web service will not return the online status of contacts.

The script it is based on can be changed to get online status but it has serious problems. Trying to get the online status causes the script to hang. I haven't found a workable solution.
#8.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2007-10-31 09:13 (Reply)
sometimes i have to try 2-3 times to get the contacts..
what can cause this?
#9 bill on 2008-05-05 00:02 (Reply)
Hello Bill

There was a problem a while ago, with an older version of the code, which created a similar problem. I'm not sure what would cause such a problem now though.

I'll try and take a look at it.
#9.1 Jonathan Street (Homepage) on 2008-05-05 16:55 (Reply)

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