1141674 - Reimplement Facebook Chat not using XMPP

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Chat Core :: General, defect)

Description

[pedrogfrancisco]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
Build ID: 20150310030235

Steps to reproduce:

I want to not have to use Facebook web interface after April 31, 2015.
The XMPP server is going to be disabled after that date [1]

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/chat


Actual results:

I found an implementation of chat using the newer API, via web calls, at https://github.com/Schmavery/facebook-chat-api .


Expected results:

I would like someone more knowledgeable than me to evaluate and, if possible, integrate, the new chat API before April 31.

Comment 1

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

Not sure why I never saw this, but yes...we should plan to stop using the XMPP interface. It currently has still been working for me, however.

My current plan is to switch to the MQTT transport that the Facebook Messenger apps work. This uses MQTT over TCP with JSON/Thrift messaging. libpurple did an implementation of this for GSoC last year, we could either include their C++ code or rewrite it into JavaScript (which would allow use in Thunderbird).

Comment 2

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

Attachment: Conversation about libpurple implementation

The libpurple code is available at: https://hg.pidgin.im/soc/2015/jgeboski/facebook/file/6a0a79182ebc/libpurple/protocols/facebook

Comment 3

[Wesley Branton]

Just so you guys and gals know, the Facebook chat is now broken in Thunderbird, so this issue should be patched ASAP.

Comment 4

[pedrogfrancisco]

I think it would be best if you opened another bug for that and then linking it here.

Fixing Facebook brokenness may involve other solution than migrating to the new API.

Comment 5

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

It's really all the same bug at this point. XMPP has stopped working, we need to do something else.

Comment 7

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

FYI we put up a blog post about this if people are interested in more information: http://blog.instantbird.org/2016/01/facebook-chat-issues/

Comment 9

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

I've started some work on this and have gotten authentication working.

Comment 10

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

Attachment: WIP v1

I have a WIP that downloads the contact list. I wanted to get some feedback on my use of promises from Nihanth.

Comment 11

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

Attachment: WIP v2

This now connects to MQTT and is able to send/parse messages.

Comment 12

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

I don't think we should do this as it would be chasing after Facebook and supporting a non-standards protocol.

I think this is a good example of why we should allow extensions to implement protocols, however.