Features

The library currently supports:

• Connecting / disconnecting with the MSN Messenger service
• MSNP8 protocol
• File transfer
• Fires events when contact go online or offline or change status
• Automatically synchronizes contact lists and keeps contact data up to date
• Create/Remove contactgroups
• Convenient enumerating through contacts in different lists
• Request or receive conversations
• Multiple users in one conversation
• Send messages
• Received messages include information about font, charset, color, decoration
• Privacy settings of the contactlist owner
• Provides hotmail inbox status
• Error handling

There are still some things yet to be implemented:

• Upgrade to newer protocols
• Notify of new incoming e-mail messages
• Owner profile
• Proxy support

License

dotMSN can be used free of charge in both commercial and non-commercial software. Selling dotMSN as a library is forbidden. dotMSN is not (yet) open-source. It isn't that important, the documentation will answer most of your questions quicker than the source-code.

Download

Documentation

The primary documentation for dotMSN is based on the xml-doc abilities in C#. The documentation is similar to the .net framework documentation on MSDN. There are two versions available:

Resources

My two main resources about the protocol are:

About the author

My name is Bas Geertsema and I am a student at the University of Twente, Netherlands. Besides my study I have my own e-development business, Xih Productions. Xih Productions does development ranging from simple dynamic sites to management information systems for small businesses.

Projects who use dotMSN

I hope this library is usefull for (many) people. If you made a MSN bot, integrated dotMSN with your own application or created something else using dotMSN please let me know! Just out of curiosity :) I will put cool projects online here.

Changelog

10 Apr 04:

• Changed the example a bit in order to resolve the 'contacts offline' bug

22 Mar 04:

• Added Filetransfer support! (See Conversation.FileTransferHandler object)
• Please notify me of any problems you have with filetransfers.
• Some people reported errors about contacts not going online. It seemed some (migrated) accounts had problems when you first set your status and synchronize afterwards. Thus: you should always synchronize before you set your initial status. Misbehaviour will throw an exception in this release.
• RequestConversation() methods return a Conversation object. This makes more sense to set the event handlers here afterwards.
• The example is updated with filetransfer example and changed login procedure (see bug above).
• The assembly is now signed

12 Jan 04:

• Authenticating > 3 times with the passport served gave a timeout exception. This is solved now.
• Added exception 'RegularExpressionException' for better debugging.

1 Dec 03:

• SynchronizeList() caused troubles with certain accounts ('Input string was incorrect format') and threw an exception. This was due to an internal buffer being too small. This is fixed now.

27 Oct 03:

• Example project improved: it gives now better insight in how to send messages.

15 Oct 03:
Protocol change to version 8 (MSNP8)

• Redesigned new SYN method. 'ListReceived' events will not be fired after Synchronizing anymore! Only the RequestList(..) method will do that. A new event is added, see below.
• Use passport authentication through HTTPS (Nexus service)
• New callback defined, SynchronizationCompleted.
• Version set to 1.1

05 Jun 2003:

• Fixed unicode bug. Unicode messages are now sent propertly.

01 Apr 2003:

• Added functionality to the example program. A piece of code is included to show how to enumerate through a contactlist.

27 Feb 2003:

• Fixed 100% CPU usage (in some cases) problem.
• Added new Conversation.SendMessage(..) method to specify charset. Note: you can also create your own header (look in the protocol specs) to fully customize the messages you send.
• Please notify me of any bugs/problems/weird things you come across!

13 Feb 2003:

• There was a problem with the ReverseRemovedHandler event. This has been fixed now (it uses the right delegate).

08 Jan 2003:

• Change the example. It is now more userfriendly. Besides that it seemed I only updated the dotMSN.dll in the root directory, this way an older dotMSN version was used which could lead to connection problems.
• I get some questions by e-mail regarding the use of dotMSN in ASPX pages. My experience with ASP is somewhat limited (and so is my time) so if someone could tell me what can and what can not be done using dotMSN with ASP.NET I would greatly appreciate it. Ofcourse I will put any answers here online.

05 Jan 2003:

• Fixed connection problems

19 Nov 2002:

• Changed IP adress from messenger server: 64.4.13.58 to 64.4.13.17. This caused problems logging in. You can now specify your own server (if necessary) using the MessengerServer property.

31 Sep 2002:

• ContactOffline event will now work correctly

28 Jul 2002:

• Fixed RequestConversation(). Due to some last-minute changes the messaging only worked one way around. This should be solved now.
• Added 'ClientData' field to multiple classes. This provides more interaction with the client programmer
• Fixed status change problems.