Instant Messenger Online status check/indicator for GTalk, MSN (Skype), Facetime (or Messages)

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to check online status (indicator) for any of these instant messengers: GTalk, MSN (Skype), Facetime (or Messages).

It would be great if I can get the user's online status to see if s/he is online, away, busy, idle, etc. for any of these instant messengers: AIM, GTalk, ICQ, MSN and YAHOO. (If there is another IM service that provides this kind of detailed information, please let me know). Thanks.

I am able to get online status for AIM, ICQ and YAHOO by curling to (big.oscar.aol.com for AIM, web.icq.com for icq and opi.yahoo.com for YAHOO) and parse the response.

Note: GTalk used to have badges and it's no longer available. This is a good example of what I'm looking for: http://motyar.blogspot.com/2010/04/gtalk-status-checker-with-php.html

Answer 1

This will differ from service to service. I did this recently and found a blog post about how to do this for Skype, but don't know for the others.

Code belongs to annar2r, I didn't make any of it:

<?php

function get_skype_status($username, $image = false, $icon = false ){
    //creating url
    //if you need small icon
    if($image && $icon)
    {
    /***************************************
        Possible types of images:

        * balloon            - Balloon style 
        * bigclassic        - Big Classic Style 
        * smallclassic        - Small Classic Style 
        * smallicon        - Small Icon (transparent background) 
        * mediumicon        - Medium Icon 
        * dropdown-white    - Dropdown White Background 
        * dropdown-trans    - Dropdown Transparent Background
        ****************************************/
        return "http://mystatus.skype.com/smallicon/".$username;
    }
    //if you need image
    else if($image)
    {
        return "http://mystatus.skype.com/".$username;
    }
    //or just text
    else
    {
    /***************************************
        Possible status  values:
         NUM        TEXT                DESCRIPTION
        * 0     UNKNOWN             Not opted in or no data available. 
        * 1     OFFLINE                 The user is Offline 
        * 2     ONLINE                  The user is Online 
        * 3     AWAY                    The user is Away 
        * 4     NOT AVAILABLE       The user is Not Available 
        * 5     DO NOT DISTURB  The user is Do Not Disturb (DND) 
        * 6     INVISIBLE               The user is Invisible or appears Offline 
        * 7     SKYPE ME                The user is in Skype Me mode
        ****************************************/
        $url = "http://mystatus.skype.com/".$username.".xml";
        //getting contents
        $curl = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
        curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        $data = curl_exec($curl);
        curl_close($curl);

        $pattern = '/xml:lang="en">(.*)</';
        preg_match($pattern,$data, $match); 

        return $match[1];   
    }
}

//getting skype status icon
$ico = get_skype_status("ar2rsawseen", true, true);
echo "<p>Skype icon:</p>";
echo "<p><img src='".$ico."'/></p>";

//getting skype status image
$image = get_skype_status("ar2rsawseen", true);
echo "<p>Skype image:</p>";
echo "<p><img src='".$image."'/></p>";

//getting skype status text
$status = get_skype_status("ar2rsawseen");
echo "<p>Skype status:</p>";
echo "<p>".$status."</p>";

?>