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GaimStat

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 by digitalpeer, updated Monday, January 17, 2005

What is GaimStat?

If you've ever used the old ICQ service, you probably knew that they had a way for you to put your status on your website. Well, this is that, and more- the Gaim way. This allows you to show an online/offline image on your website for every service that Gaim supports all through a simple Gaim plugin.

How It Works

There are two parts to to the service. There are some PHP scripts to put on a web server and there is a Gaim plugin. When you load the plugin, it monitors the active services you are using and it sends a HTTP GET request to a web server at a set time interval. This updates your status through a PHP script in a MySql database. Then, when you request the image for your status from the same web server with your username and the service you want to know about, the server returns the correct image. When you kill the plugin (quit gaim) it sends a request to set your status as offline on all services. If you get disconnected, and the server has not heard from you in more than 5 minutes, you are also determined offline.

For more information on how to compile and use the plugin with Gaim, see http://gaim.sourceforge.net/faq.php and the README file with the plugin.

Public Status Server

If you don't have the resources to have your own web server setup, you can use the server here at digitalpeer.com. The only picture types on this server are the ones issued in the default package. Of course, if you setup your own server, you can create your own images.

The URL's to set and get your status on this server are as follows:
"http://www.digitalpeer.com/gaimstat/setstat.php" and "http://www.digitalpeer.com/gaimstat/getstat.php"

Note: If you use digitalpeer.com's public server, your information is NOT permanently saved or used in any way. If your status is in any way requested, and you have timed out or set your status to offline, your information is permanently deleted. The scripts aim to keep the data in the database pretty minimal.

Getting your Status

To get your status, simply request the image at:

http://www.digitalpeer.com/gaimstat/getstat.php?user=[screenname]&service=[service]&pictype=[a,c...]&ext=[gif,png,,jpg]&showoffline=[1,0]

[service] is required and can be any of the following (and more):
"aim" (this is both for TOC and AIM/ICQ)
"icq"
"irc"
"msn"
"jabber"
"yahoo"

[user] is required and is your screenname as Gaim knows it. With MSN, this may mean your e-mail address and not your alias.

[pictype] is optional. The default is "a" in the package. This tells the status script what style of picture to return.

[ext] is required only when [pictype] is set. Valid arguments are "jpg", "gif", and "png". If no [ext] is specified the default is "png".

[showoffline] is optional. The default is 1 (true). If you set this to 0 (false), a 1x1 transparent blank gif image will be returned instead of the offline image for the current [pictype].

If you want to display an image for each of your services on your website, then include a picture like:

<img border="0" src="http://www.digitalpeer.com/gaimstat/getstat.php?user=[screenname]&service=[service]&pictype=[yourstyle]">

Feel free to include one for each service you want visible on your website.

Setting Your Status

Of course, the plugin handles this automatically, but if you need to test it or want to set it manually, this is how it is done.

Statuses: 1 = Online, 0 = Offline

Example 1: "http://www.digitalpeer.com/gaimstat/setstat.php?status=1&[service]=[screenname]"

There are plenty of ways to update multiple services with multiple statuses. Any service following a status is set to that status. If no status is specified, the default is 0.

Example 2: "http://www.digitalpeer.com/gaimstat/setstat.php?msn=myname&status=1&aim=myname&jabber=myname&status=0&yahoo=myname"

This will set msn to offline, aim to online, jabber to online, and yahoo to offline.

Thanks

A special thanks to the developers that have majorly contributed to the plugin because of the ever changing Gaim API.