mlOscar 0.9.0

mlOscar is an OCaml library that facilitates the encoding/decoding of the AOL OSCAR protocol. Networking functionality is available to enable access to the AIM network.

It has been tested using OCaml 3.07. It probably works on other versions, as well.

Download

mloscar-0.9.0.tar.bz2

Previous releases and md5sums are here.

Bugs

The library doesn't handle full 32-bit values correctly on 32-bit systems (the most significant bit is lost). Fortunately, OSCAR doesn't rely on the most significant bit in most (all?) situations [that matter]. Also, the bug is easily fixed by using the Int32 datatype. Unfortunately, I don't feel like fixing this any time soon.

The IP address of the aim server is hard-coded into the library. Ideally a DNS lookup should be used. The capability of specifying an alternate server would be nice.

Documentation

The API reference can be found here. To understand how it works, take a look at the sample program.

Changelog can be found here.

Quickstart

mlOscar uses OCamlConf which is similar to autoconf. Type "configure" to generate a Makefile.

buddydump uses OCamlMakefile for the build process.

Examples

The following example program is included to demonstrate the use of the library:

buddydump - small program that logs on, dumps buddy list information to the screen until the user types "q". A cursory examination of the source will reveal how to handle and generate various interesting events (such as message typing notification, sending messages, processing server acknowledgments, etc.)

Credits

Alexandr Shutko's OSCAR documentation was extremely useful. Ethereal dumps of AIM client-server traffic from gaim and Net::OSCAR were also beneficial.

License

mlOscar is licensed under the MIT license.

Chris Gorski - cgorski@cgorski.org - [Home]