Messenger Presence API Exposed

Today has been a great day, MSN Messenger control for web plus a presence API. The second one was a simple URL to query messenger.services.live.com and get a user's online status image. Not bad... but could be better!

Playing a bit, I found that you can get the full JSON of the presence API, like this example:

URL:

 http://messenger.services.live.com/users/a4ac90d9a8d3ed64%40apps.messenger.live.com/presence

JSON:

{
    status: "Away",
    icon: {
        height: 16,
        url: "http://settings.messenger.live.com/static/w13r1/Conversation/img/Status_Away.gif",
        width: 16
    },
    statusText: "Away",
    id: "a4ac90d9a8d3ed64@apps.messenger.live.com",
    displayName: "Kartones :: .Code :: 4.95T"
}

More interesting, don't you think? We can get the status text, image url, and even the display name! Much better for mashups and gadgets!

So, by building a small AJAX proxy (like the Twitter badge one), Pedroafa (who is becoming the JSON master) and I can query for our "full" status and handle it with JSON.

We've uploaded a small demo here (no longer available): https://kartones.net/demos/001/WindowsLiveStatusMessenger.htm
Note: you must have opted in to show web presence in order to see your status.

Or you can see my actual Messenger status in this blog, near the bottom of the left sidebar. Nice :)