TR Forums

dejay007 · Wed Dec 03, 2003 3:12 pm

Can someone tell me how to get the source code so that when you create a form, and try to send a message to an instant message box it will work. also can you help me with visual basic programming for aim?

thanks .... Jared

UberGerbil · Wed Dec 03, 2003 3:29 pm

dejay007 wrote:
Can someone tell me how to get the source code so that when you create a form, and try to send a message to an instant message box it will work. also can you help me with visual basic programming for aim?

thanks .... Jared

I believe AOL has purposefully not documented that. The various 3rd party IM apps had to reverse-engineer the protocols, and re-engineer them everytime AOL changed them (which was pretty frequently for a while). It's possible one of those developers has documented the interface, but given that AOL claims the API as a trade secret they would be open to lawsuits, so if they made it public it would only be through backdoor routes.

Microsoft has documented Windows Messenger
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winmessenger/winmessenger/messenger_entry.asp?frame=true but they have not documented the API to MSN messenger (though the two interoperate).

dejay007 · Wed Dec 03, 2003 3:34 pm

Okay so if i take those codes from msn and enter them into visual basic will i be able to create like my own prog? do you know what im talking about? i am talking about like how ppl use to make punters and progs like that.

UberGerbil · Thu Dec 04, 2003 2:26 pm

Uh, well, programming is a bit more involved than that, but yeah, that's the general idea. I don't know what a "punter" is (other than in the football sense, or the British slang sense) but you can do what you want subject to the contstraints the API imposes on you.

I played around with this briefly a year or so ago and quickly wrote something that would log all my contacts so I could find out if they'd been online while I was away. It was pretty trivial. You just have to add a reference to the messenger automation library (sorry, I forget the exact name for it but it should be easy to find in the list VB generates).

Note that this only works with Windows Messenger 4.6 and 4.7. These are the versions that were distributed with Windows XP and I think 2000, though I could be wrong -- the one that shipped with 2000 might have been older.

Mime · Thu Dec 04, 2003 2:34 pm

I got bored one day and made an AIM bot in Perl using the Net::AIM module. Whether there's something similar for VB or not I dunno.

http://search.cpan.org/~aryeh/Net-AIM-1.22/AIM.pm

Punters are programs which you point at a person and they sever that person's connection. They're a favorite pastime of trolls and script kiddies.

Thu Dec 04, 2003 2:40 pm

deejay007: don't take this too closely, but not having a clue on *anything* won't get you very far. As for the topic itself...

AOL has naturally not released the source code for their IM for obvious reasons. If you really want to have a look at source code that works, one good bet would be the GAIM project (gaim.sourceforge.net).

However, it seems that you don't have many programming concepts, and the source code will look like chinese to you. Programming isn't like double-clicking on a an icon, clicking on "next" a few times and then rebooting, you know?...

</rant>

Craig P. · Mon Dec 15, 2003 12:12 am

UberGerbil wrote:
I believe AOL has purposefully not documented that. The various 3rd party IM apps had to reverse-engineer the protocols, and re-engineer them everytime AOL changed them (which was pretty frequently for a while). It's possible one of those developers has documented the interface, but given that AOL claims the API as a trade secret they would be open to lawsuits, so if they made it public it would only be through backdoor routes.

FWIW, the way I learned trade secrets in school (which was, admittedly, a brief overview in an engineering curriculum, not in-depth in a legal curriculum), anyone who reverse-engineered and published would be legally protected. A trade secret relies on it being kept secret, and if someone reverse-engineers it, then the ones holding the secret are screwed. AOL might well sue if it were published, but as long as the reverse-engineering was legitimate, I don't think AOL would ultimately have any recourse.

This is, incidentally, how we got PC clones, as I learned it -- IBM made the BIOS a trade secret and someone (Phoenix, I think) reverse-engineered it.

Ryan0204 · Mon Feb 23, 2004 11:57 pm

http://www.dosfx.com/downloads.asp has an aim client written in vb.

fc34 · Wed Feb 25, 2004 4:07 am

How is it that if you legitly reverse engineer my software I cant sue, esp. when my software is copywrighted?

TR Forums

Aol's AIM Source codes?

Aol's AIM Source codes?

Re: Aol's AIM Source codes?

Re: Aol's AIM Source codes?

Who is online