Month: July 2010

While the old messenger APIs have been steadily crumbling the past few versions, and the latest WLM10 beta having made it nearly useless, I was amazed to find several new APIs.
One of them is the “LivePlatform” API, which seems to be what messenger is using to retrieve the contact list and social news.
I don’t have time to investigate this fully, but I did get to put together a small demo. To try it, create a new console application in C#, add C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Contacts\LivePlatform.dll as a reference, and put in the following code in Main:

 LivePlatform.LivePlatformFactory factory=new LivePlatform.LivePlatformFactory();
            LivePlatform.ILiveIdentityCollection ids = factory.IdentityService.CachedIdentities;
            System.Console.WriteLine("Cached identities");
            for (int i = 0; i < ids.Count; i++)
            {
                LivePlatform.ILiveIdentity id = ids[i];
                if (id.HasPassword)
                    System.Console.WriteLine("\t"+id.Username);
            }
            System.Console.Write("Username: ");
            string szUsername = System.Console.ReadLine();
            LivePlatform.ILiveIdentity found = null;
            for (int i = 0; i < ids.Count; i++)
            {
                LivePlatform.ILiveIdentity id = ids[i];
                if (id.HasPassword && id.Username.ToLower().Equals(szUsername.ToLower()))
                {
                    found = id;
                    break;
                }
            }
            string szPassword = "";
            if (found == null)
            {
                System.Console.Write("Password: ");
                szPassword = System.Console.ReadLine();
            }
            platform=(found==null)?factory.CreateEx(szUsername,szPassword):factory.Create(found);
            platform.Config["BlockingSignin"] = true; //Don't set this to make Signin non-blocking. You'll have to wire up events to listen for OnReady before you do anything, though.
            platform.Signin(null);
            System.Console.WriteLine("Full name: "+platform.Me.FullName);
            LivePlatform.ILiveObjectCollection query = platform.Query("type(contact)");
            System.Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Contacts: {0}", query.Count));
            for (int c = 0; c < query.Count; c++)
            {
                LivePlatform.ILiveObject obj = query[c];
                LivePlatform.ILiveContact contact = obj as LivePlatform.ILiveContact;
                System.Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} ({1})", contact.FullName,(contact.Emails.Count>0)?contact.Emails[0].Address:"none"));
            }
            System.Console.WriteLine("Press enter to quit");
            System.Console.ReadLine();

It’ll print your full name, as well as your full contact list. Also note that if you added your facebook account, those contacts will show up too.
Some other queries I saw when debugging messenger:

type(invite)
type(contact) and contacts:canHideFrom(true)
type(contact)
type(contact) and contacts:isHidingFrom(true) and contancts:canHideFrom(true)
type(contact)
type(circle)
type(category)
type(category) and contacts:isfavorite(true)
type(contact) and contacts:isonline(true)
type(category) and contacts:isfavorite(true)

I believe that hooking this API in messenger might allow for some pretty cool tricks, for example something like BuddyFuse.

As a final note, I’d like to say that I’m posting this because I’m hoping more sharing might make the messenger community more like it once was. If you find out more about this API, or other new APIs, please be so kind to share them too so a new sharing eco-system might emerge. Thanks.

EDIT: Added cached identities.