I just finished working on a small task where I wanted to use Live Messenger API in a web page (this allows the user to contact you using Messenger without having Messenger installed on his machine and having your contact set in it).  A friend of mine just did this for his business web site and I found it very useful. I decided to try it myself.

Since my friend has already done this, he guided me directly where I needed to go to learn about the API. After 10 minutes, it was done.  Basically, you just have to paste this (replace 1111111111111 by your user ID):

<a target="_blank" href="http://settings.messenger.live.com/Conversation/IMMe.aspx?
			invitee=1111111111111@apps.messenger.live.com&mkt=en-US">
    <img style="border-style:none;" src="http://messenger.services.live.com/users/1111111111111@
			apps.messenger.live.com/presenceimage?mkt=en-US" />
</a>

...and it returns this series of icons:

, , etc   ....they are small, just 16x16 and not "clean".

So what can I  do? After investigating, I found that I can get the status by two ways (1111111111111 is your user ID):

1- http://messenger.services.live.com/users/1111111111111@apps.messenger.live.com/presenceimage?mkt=en-US

...that will redirect to the status gif image.

2 - http://messenger.services.live.com/users/1111111111111@apps.messenger.live.com/presence?mkt=en-US

...that will return the status information in JSON format.

One thing I didn't want is use JavaScript. Obviously, if that wouldn't have been the case, JSON would have been the best choice here and easily implemented.

So I had to do the job from the server. I was looking for the easiest way so I just called ".../presenceimage?", using HttpWebRequest and just replaced "live.com" link by my server path... easy!

using (WebResponse response = request.GetResponse())
{
    string msnpath = response.ResponseUri.AbsolutePath;
    localImg += msnpath.Substring(msnpath.LastIndexOf("/") + 1);
}

Note that I don't download the image by calling GetResponseStream.

So by replacing the path, I obviously need to have the replacing image on my server. For that, I Googled a bit and found two set of icons that look much better. MSN Crystal Icons and Messenger Icon Pack... Just use your favorite image editor to resize then and/or change the format.

While I was there, I said "Well, why not a custom control?" To implement this I just rendered the a and img elements in a WebControl ... just few lines... look at the code if you are interested...  In the ASPX, it looks like this:

<lfdx:MSNMessenger uid="8a69c004ce9860b4" cssclass="wt" serverimgpath="images/" runat="server" />

• uid is the Messenger user Id
• cssclass class applied to a element
• serverimgpath is the location of your custom images

Download the project here. Note that I have included the "Messenger Icon Pack" that I have resized to 30x30 gif images.

Nothing complex here just a fun project!