Import Email Addressess from Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail

Introduction
The other thread has been a hot topic and I find the answers are getting mixed together and some people are having trouble tracking down the examples provided. I have opened this topic not as a duplicate, but as a clean thread for further discussion.

Warning: I have personally not tested any of these and I do not endorse their use. Read all of the code provided carefully and be absolutely positive you know what it will do before you test it. Use at your own risk!


Yahoo
ehsan has provided a link to a library he wrote to retrieve contacts and other information from Yahoo.

• Older version
• Newest version (you need to register (free) to download the code)

Gmail
nanscency has provided links to a PHP class that he wrote which uses libgmailer to retrieve a list of contacts from Gmail.

• Grabbing a Gmail Contact List

MSN Messenger
Once again, nanscency has offered a solution that he found worked. Using FlumpCakes MSN Protocol Script script, nanscency wrote a wrapping procedure (as well as modifying the original script slightly) to clean up the methods.
Note: This only obtains contacts from an MSN Messenger List, not a Hotmail Address book.

• Grabbing an MSN Contact List

Conclusion
The intent of this new thread is to keep track of free scripts that will resolve the issue. Also, let's try to avoid spamming the original posters of these scripts, some may not monitor these forums as frequently any more. Also, don't forget: another great resource for free scripts could our sister-site, Scripts.com. Although I haven't tried searching there for any IM related scripts, they are a pretty good resource for all programming languages.

MadCowDzz,

Probably a good idea for a new thread, there were more than a couple of one post wonders.

There are a few points I would like to comment on.

MSN/Hotmail
1 - Some web hosts don't provide you with all the functionality you need to get this script to work. This emerged as a problem with godaddy hosting but there are probably others as well.

As a way around this problem I've set up a simple web service which should work on all but the most crippling web hosts. It isn't ideal but if you can't run the main script on your server and you absolutely need this functionality it is a potential solution.

2 - The script does not grap contacts from hotmail [might be worth correcting this in your post MadCowDzz]. It only interacts with the MSN messenger service so grabs contacts from MSN Messenger. Hotmail and MSN Messenger contacts are not identical so you'll miss some with this script. It is a frequent point of confusion so it is worth highlighting.

AIM
I've also found and slightly modified a class to grab contacts from AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). As with MSN/Hotmail this is the instant messenger contact list and is not necessarily the same as an AOLMail contact list.

I'm not actually sure of the value of this, AIM screennames don't necessarily convert into emails so I don't know how I would go about getting in contact with these users.

That's all I've got, hopefully others will be able to add other resources. Currently things are fairly limited. It's been a few months since I checked but there isn't really that much else out there whether on scripts, hotscripts, phpclasses (that I could get to work . . . apart from ehsan's yahoo class) or sourceforge.

Future Work

Other services people may be interested . . .
Hotmail
AOL Mail

According to this article these may also be of interest . . .
Lycos
Sina.com in China
Excite, part of AskJeeves

Are there any other services people would be interested in?

Here's the class(es) to import contacts from GMail, Yahoo, MSN, MySpace, Rediff etc.
http: // www . phpclasses.org/browse/package/3895.html

Please correct the url as i am new to DevArticles.

Hi,

Grab Yahoo class on PHP Classes has been updated. The latest version is 1.4. The class stopped functioning to retrieve messenger list, but with the help with one of the user on the site, I have resolved the problem and updated the package. Hope it helps.

Thanks.

I am using curl.phptrack.com contact importer for yahoo , hotmail , orkut and also its working very good for gmail email contact importer. They are also providing number of examples with curl php book. Curl php Book is also really great and have very nice working examples. Amazing thing is that these contact email grabber are based on curl explorer based, because I visited some other email contact grabber they are using socket programming and getting email contacts based on messenger request, using this way messenger will be sing out and will show message you are login at any other site this will be show –ve impact on the customer. Curl.phptrack.com also providing full source code so it’s easy to modify and customized, and amazing thing is that you can get all of stuff only in 25 dollars including curl php book with working yahoo contact , hotmail , and gmail contact grabber.

You can visit online demo at following urls on curl.phptrack.com

I will suggest Contact Grabber
Contact Grabber is an application used to fetch contacts from various email & social networking sites. The sites included are Rediff, Orkut, Myspace, Yahoo, Gmail and MSN Messenger.

url is
sourceforge(dot)net/projects/contactgrabber

Regards!!!
php-web-developer(dot)net