WebIM explained

September 2nd, 2006

So what can you do with the WebIM feature of LiveBot? Wondering how to retreive your messenger status via a webservice? Or how to let someone start a chat directly from the web? I’ll explain everything in this post.

Step 1: register as webim user

You don’t want to show your IM address all over the web, so the first thing you should do is binding your email address to a webim nickname. Open a conversation with LiveBot, and say something like ‘register for webim’, and you’ll be able to pick a nickname. You can always unregister by saying ‘disable webim’, and you can change your username by saying ’change my webim username’. Let’s say we registered ourselve as John.

Obtaining John’s status

From now on, we’ll be able to get John’s Messenger status. There are three URLs we can use for this.

The status will be either ‘active’, ‘away’, ‘offline’, or ‘unknown’.

Starting a WebIM conversation with John

Let’s say John maintains a website. He can put an iframe on his website, and use http://livebot.msgweb.nl/_api/webim/john/chat/ as source. This is a simple module which shows his status, and prompts his visitor for his name when he wants to start a chat with John. John can also write his own interface asking for his visitor’s name. If Ronald wants to chat with John, John should lead him to http://livebot.msgweb.nl/_api/webim/john/chat/ronald/.

Windows Live Spaces Gadget

Would you like to show your presence information and a WebIM-chat-form on your Windows Live Space? Install the WebIM Gadget on your space!

Sample, contact me!

Here is my WebIM frame: