Monday, July 9, 2012

Skype API version 1.4 RELEASED!!

Hi There,

Finally, I've released version 1.4. on the maven central. I intended to release earlier last week, but I bought a new computer and had a lot of trouble going from lost data to hardware incompatibility with linux.

But the time has come! I worked quite a bit on this version to fix a lot of bugs and I hope it is more stable under every OS platform. Here are the release notes:

  • Windows :
    • now the native library can be compiled using mingw, both under windows and linux. It is still possible to compile using visual studio, but mingw compilation is preferred.
    • a small bug in getInstaledPath function has been fixed.
    • fixed native library extraction and loading
  • Mac OS :
    • fixed problems with getProfile and other functions that depended on deprecated MESSAGE object have been fixed.
    • framework extraction fixed to work both from jar and eclipse

  • Linux : a major rewrite has been done. There are now two native implementations, the old one using X11 and a new one using DBUS. The X11 version was very unstable and sometimes would even connect to a skype instance running on another user.
The default implementation is now DBUS, which proved much more stable on my tests. It is still possible to use the old implementation setting a JAVA System variable, "skype.api.impl", to x11.

Besides the bug fixes, some new features have been added:

  • Chat.setGuidelines : can be used to change a set guidelines
  • Chat.addListener : allows registering a listener that will be triggered for users entering and leaving a chat
  • Skype.addChatEditListener : allows adding a listener that will be triggered when messages are edited

Besides, the samples have been moved to its own project and a lot of refactorings have been to done to organize the code.

The samples can be found on the following project:

https://github.com/taksan/skype-api-samples

Again, for newcomers, you can use the API adding the following dependency to your maven project:

<dependency>
      <groupId>com.github.taksan</groupId>
      <artifactId>skype-java-api</artifactId>
      <version>1.4</version>
</dependency>

There is also a shaded jar, if you prefer:

https://github.com/downloads/taksan/skype-java-api/skype-java-api-1.4.jar

That's it for now. Please, feel free to drop bug reports, I'll try to be more promptly from now on.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Skype Java API 1.4 on the oven

After a long time doing nothing at all related to the skype java api, I recently had some motivation to work on some skype projects and that made me work on some open issues.

First, I rewrote the whole linux native api because the existing X11 implementation isn't very stable, crashes on some newer computers, and other annoying problems.

So, I wrote a dbus alternative that proved much more reliable. I also fixed some bugs that have been reported under windows and I intend to fix all the currently reported bugs under windows.

And finally, on the bug hunting subject, I'll be working on the bugs under Mac OS. I haven't dedicated much time to fix the bugs reported under Mac OS because that is the platform I know least. In fact, I don't own a MacBook and I have to use VM to work on these bugs. But I understand that the mac os native library is the least stable, so I intend to dedicate a lot of effort to understand its code better and fix these issues for once.

As for new features, I implemented to extra listeners:

- ChatListener : a listener triggered when users enter or leave a group chat

- ChatMessageEditListener: a listener triggered when messages are edited

 Another change: I moved all the samples to their own project:

 https://github.com/taksan/skype-api-samples

 I believe it will be easier to get started with the api if the samples are not mixed with the api code.

And finally, some propaganda on some of my new skype projects:

- https://github.com/taksan/skype-bash-file-transfer
A simple application that sends files from the bash command line:

- https://github.com/taksan/send-skype-message
Another simple application to send messages to users or group chats from the command line (as you can see, I love doing stuff from command line)

- https://github.com/taksan/epyk-survey
 Epyk Survey is a bot that manages simple polls in skype group chats. It has been very useful in among my coworkers to decide where we'll lunch everyday =)

That's it. Thanks for you patience Takeuchi