Facebook Application

[Aziraphale]

In a forum topic adem_is suggested creating a Facebook application so that people viewing his Facebook profile could see his Messenger status.  I created a very basic version fairly quickly, but only just got around to adding Messenger Plus! formatting code support to it so I held off making any kind of announcement about it until now.

However, it's now in a state that I'm happy with, so if you have a Facebook profile, feel free to go and add the application and get a box on your profile displaying your Messenger status.

Your status is only updated every five minutes, but I think that's frequent enough for there not to be any real problems.

Supported features:

• Messenger Plus! personalised statuses are displayed as if they were normal statuses, just like they are in Messenger (with MsgPlus installed).
• Emoticons (although not custom emoticons) are converted to images in display names, personal messages and MsgPlus personalised statuses.
  
• All three "current media" formats in personal messages: Music, Games and Office.  Only music is supported (the option to "Show what I'm listening to") in Messenger normally, but add-ons are available that can set the others.
• Messenger Plus! formatting codes, both the IRC-style codes and the newer BBCode-style codes.
• Your Web2Messenger display picture is shown (this is the image that you can upload on our main site, not necessarily your Messenger display picture).
  

Note that the application does not currently support Messenger Plus! formatting gradients (background or foreground) - the start colour will be used for the entire block.  I intend to support them at a later date.

Links:
The Application's About Page
The Applications main page (which should prompt you to add it if you have not already done so).

As usual, report any bugs on the forums.  As far as I know, all MsgPlus formatting should work fine except gradients; all emoticons should be converted to images properly, but custom emoticons won't (nor are they in Messenger names/PSMs).  I've had intermittent issues with invalid characters (those not available in the current character set) appearing in the middle of names/PSMs when MsgPlus colours are used, but they stopped as quickly as they started, so I'm hoping it was an issue on Facebook's side that they've since fixed.

Also, feel free to make any comments/suggestions/bug reports on the Application's about page instead, if you wish.

I've attached a screenshot of the Web2Messenger box in my own Facebook profile to show roughly what it looks like, though I've over-used formatting codes to demonstrate them in this example:

[B4tm4n]

I'm having problems with the application. As soon as I put the application on my Facebook I get....

Code:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Unknown PSM Format: "<Data><PSM>"' in /home/w2m/subdomains/fb/.inc/appinclude.php:180 Stack trace: #0 /home/w2m/subdomains/fb/.inc/appinclude.php(273): PSM->__construct('<Data><PSM>') #1 /home/w2m/subdomains/fb/.acts/home.php(8): GetProfileBoxFBML() #2 /home/w2m/subdomains/fb/index.php(80): include('/home/w2m/subdo...') #3 {main} thrown in /home/w2m/subdomains/fb/.inc/appinclude.php on line 180

[Aziraphale]

I've changed that particular error now, so it'll log it to an internal log file and then just set your PSM to be blank.  What client are you using, though, to give you such a malformed PSM?

[B4tm4n]

I was using Firefox, but it seems to be working great now. Thanks for your hard work on the application.

[Aziraphale]

Messenger client, sorry; I should've been clearer.  PSMs are normally in a format that looks something like:

Code:

<Data><PSM>Message here</PSM><CurrentMedia>.........</CurrentMedia></Data>

but according to that error message, yours was simply:

Code:

<Data><PSM>

which isn't even valid XML, hence the error.

I was just curious as to which Messenger client you had used that had set such a patently erroneous PSM.

[B4tm4n]

I'm currently using MSN Messenger 7.5.

[DeeJay Bet]

there appears to be an error with my display name i the facebook application an even in the txt file

http://hs.facebook.com/profile.php?id=674026954 - facebook profile

http://www.web2messenger.com/status/philipworld.txt
display name intxt file is reading as:

·#·$26·$47??·$38i?·$29i·$20p ?·@ø?e·@s ?·$29i?·$38??·$47?? ·$26• //·$29 ?????s ??? ?ø??v?? ·$26???????ø???.cø.u?

but should be

- ?#?$26?$47ρн?$38iι?$29i?$20p ι?@?√e?@s м?$29iκ?$38әγ?$47ιә ?$26? //?$29 әιшәчs әηδ ғ?яεvεя    ?$26ρнίιίρш?яιδ.c?.uκ 

[PimpSC]

Great app, but the trademark symbol (TM) appears as "™". Also a question, will the "I'm" emoticons (*help, *unicef, etc) will be converted to images in the future?

[Aziraphale]

Great app, but the trademark symbol (TM) appears as "™".

We've got Unicode encoding problems in W2M's internals that have always existed in one way or another.  I'm trying to get them fixed, but it's taking time.

Also a question, will the "I'm" emoticons (*help, *unicef, etc) will be converted to images in the future?

Are they not already?  I thought I implemented that.  I'll have another look later if I remember

[Andymc]

Hmm, the display picture when I go to http://apps.facebook.com/web--messenger/ is correct, yet the one displayed on my profile hasn't updated to match it (talking about a timescale of weeks, not minutes!).  Any ideas?  I've tried removing W2M from my profile and re-adding it, but no change.

[Aziraphale]

Bleh.  Facebook cache images for your profile, and apps have to explicitly request that those cached images are refreshed when they change.  That was an oversight that I'll try to correct later.

[Aziraphale]

will the "I'm" emoticons (*help, *unicef, etc) will be converted to images in the future?

Evidently I don't know all of the codes that trigger that "I'm" image.  Care to share?

Currently these are converted: *one, *naf, *unicef, *help.  (I just added *help).  If there are any more, post them here and I'll add them.

Haven't had time to correct the DB issue yet, I'm afraid.  It'll require a significant amount of code to detect when it changes.

[Aziraphale]

Hmm, the display picture when I go to http://apps.facebook.com/web--messenger/ is correct, yet the one displayed on my profile hasn't updated to match it (talking about a timescale of weeks, not minutes!).  Any ideas?  I've tried removing W2M from my profile and re-adding it, but no change.

I've tried to hack in a fix for this (the MD5 hash of the image is appended to the image URL, so Facebook's servers should hopefully go "ah, it's a new image!" every time the image is updated).  Let me know if it's fixed or not

Edit: At the moment, your DP will only be updated on Facebook's servers (i.e. on your Facebook profile) when something else about your profile box changes, such as your name, PSM or even just your status.  I could get a check on DPs going as well, but I don't want to go checking the last modified date on 100+ images every five minutes, especially as I intend to increase the frequency of updates at some point.

Edit #2: And I just added a check to it so that it doesn't throw PHP errors around when you don't actually have a DP set...

[Andymc]

Looks like it's fixed, thanks

[PimpSC]

Evidently I don't know all of the codes that trigger that "I'm" image.  Care to share?

*red+u     American Red Cross
*bgca    Boys & Girls Clubs of America
*hsus    Humane Society of the United States
*naf    National AIDS Fund
*mssoc    National MS Society
*9mil    ninemillion.org
*sierra    Sierra Club
*help    StopGlobalWarming.org
*komen    Susan G. Komen for the Cure
*unicef    U.S. Fund for UNICEF

BTW, I'm using *help, and it's working.