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!
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