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Facebook Messenger protocol in Pidgin
- probinso 11y agoAppreciation to this project. When facebook updated their protocol, my workflow and screen `real estate` were impacted in very distracting ways. [edited to address comment]
- saurik 11y ago> I wanted to appreciate this project. You wanted to, but you don't, because...?
- padraic7a 11y agoI think it's 'he wanted to' so he posted it to HN.
- efdee 11y agoSeconded.
- MattJ100 11y ago> my workflow and screen `real estate` were impacted in very distracting ways. I doubt that was unintentional.
- raverbashing 11y agoIs it just me or there is no actual source code there?
- kaio 11y agoWiki-Entry: "The purple-facebook project simply back-ports the purple3 plugin to purple2 [..]" So i guess you won't see the actual protocol implementation in this repo but only the necessary patches.
- raverbashing 11y agoAh this makes sense, so it has only some glue code (in the .h files I guess)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ojii 11y agoActual source seems to be at https://bitbucket.org/pidgin/main/src/806baa6e240c3f491d6dac06a948e846f3ea7e42/libpurple/protocols/facebook/?at=default https://bitbucket.org/pidgin/main/src/806baa6e240c3f491d6dac...
- wooptoo 11y agoIt's a shame that Facebook removed support for XMPP in the first place. I guess it's part of their strategy to make the world more "open" and connected.
- greyman 11y agoIndeed. But it should be noted that their main competitors like Google chat or Skype also do not support it.
- jconnop 11y agoGoogle chat supports it. Though IIRC they disabled federation - so you can only chat to other google users.
- bbatha 11y agoThey don't support group chat anymore.
- arnvald 11y agoWasn't Google chat replaced by Hangouts, which does not support XMPP?
- jarek 11y agoYou can log into an @gmail.com Hangouts account through XMPP. The instructions on https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoGtalk https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoGtalk worked for my account which is also accessed by Hangouts on Android L. (At least person-to-person messaging works well - I have not attempted group chats or video or stuff)
- bisby 11y agoIndeed. Google voice texts, group chats, and video stuff do not work. I get incoming audio chat requests on pidgin for google voice calls, but they don't work.
- randomchars 11y agoIs the protocol documented somewhere?
- pmlnr 11y agohttp://mqtt.org/ http://mqtt.org/
- drdaeman 11y agoIf I get it right, MQTT is just a PubSub protocol, i.e. it essentially carries the messages, but doesn't care about their contents. Is there a standard on how chat layer (the content of published messages) is implemented? (I haven't looked into source code, but guess it's not just a plain text, but it has some structure to it.)
- pmlnr 11y agoC implementation of Facebook MQTT for bitlbee: https://github.com/jgeboski/bitlbee-facebook https://github.com/jgeboski/bitlbee-facebook
- randomchars 11y agoSo that's a no, as it appears there's no documentation in the repository beyond the comments.
- kevinSuttle 11y agoWait a minute. I thought "Facebook Messenger" protocol was just MQTT?
- apetresc 11y agoIs there any part of this plugin that is specific to Pidgin? If it's just a libpurple plugin, it should work with Adium too, right?
- ultramancool 11y agoYeah, as well as minbif and others.
- upofadown 11y agoAwesome. Now we will be able to have a XMPP/Jabber transport that works with Facebook. Great for sort of keeping in touch with the relatives without the horror of actual Facebook.
- lazzlazzlazz 11y agomessenger.com is a great alternative to use Messenger without the distraction of Facebook in the background.
- xg15 11y agoWhat I'm worried about: The protocol is proprietary, not a public API and all official clients can be updated by Facebook almost instantly. This means they can make arbitrary changes to the protocol at any time without bothering the users of official clients very much. This library would have to keep up with all the changes or clients would quickly stop working. So is the manpower there to do this?
- boomzilla 11y agowhich is OK, as long as there is a community to support the effort. I remember when Pidgin (or another IM client) had to keep up with not one, but three protocols: MSN, Yahoo and AOL. And that was done before the age of Github and pull requests.
- profeta 11y agodon't forget google-sorry-excuse-for-xmpp jabber implementation on gtalk. But it is nice to see the world coming to yet another cycle. sigh.
- strathmeyer 11y agoWell there used to be this thing called AOL instant messenger. Then people cloned the protocol. So AOL would just start causing purposeful buffer overflows that would take them to specific parts in their code but mess up the people trying to imitate it. But they figured it out, and now they teach students in class how to overcome it. The other illegal thing they taught us was decrypting a DVD.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoThis in NO way addresses "proprietary protocol".