[update]I've attached a new version of VBDotNetExample. In the one in the installer I had forgotten to create the plugin object as a COM Object[/update]

Hi all,

Lately I've been working on a new plugin: Bot Developers Kit, or simply: BotDK.

What does it do?
BotDK is a plugin for Messenger Plus! 3. Using this plugin's own plugin interface, developers can create auto-responders or so-called bots for MSN Messenger.

Features

• 100% thread-safe COM based plugin interface
  
• Create your own bot with it's own commands using the plugin interface. You're completely free to choose the format of your commands ('![command]' or '/[command]' or just '[command]' or something completely different)
  
• Plugin notifications:
  
  • when an incoming conversation has been started
    
  • when an outgoing conversation has been started
    
  • when a conversation has ended
    
  • when a message has been received
    BotDK plugins will receive messages before they arrive at MSN Messenger. BotDK plugins can also control wether or not the incoming message will be forwarded to MSN Messenger.
    
  • when a message has been sent
    BotDK plugins will receive messages before they are actually sent to the SwitchBoard server. BotDK plugins can also control wether or not the outgoing message will be forwarded to the SwitchBoard server.
• 'Invisible' messages: messages that MSN Messenger won't see, but BotDK's plugins will
  
• Automatically send (hidden) messages from plugins to remote users with the ability to customize the message font
  
• Automatically send messages from plugins to the local MSN Messenger user with the ability to customize the message font

• VBScript/JScript support for plugins
  
• More info for plugins about which participants are in a conversation
  
• Provide plugins with the IMessengerWindow pointer for each conversation

Nice Work!!! .. Means I can stop my project???? !!!
This is exactly what I was going to do.. but just without sock hooking.. ... I can't wait to try it!! ... I will be glad to talk to you on msn, and give some ideas/help develop some things on it.. if you need more?... I will wait for it to be released, to see if it is capable(meaning future wise) of doing the things I wanted my "Bot Developer Kit" to be capable of...
Add me on  per_bellfield@yahoo.dk if you want to talk?...

quote:

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Originally posted by (CyBeRDuDe)
Nice Work!!! .. Means I can stop my project???? !!!
This is exactly what I was going to do.. but just without sock hooking.. ... I can't wait to try it!! ... I will be glad to talk to you on msn, and give some ideas/help develop some things on it.. if you need more?... I will wait for it to be released, to see if it is capable(meaning future wise) of doing the things I wanted my "Bot Developer Kit" to be capable of...
Add me on  per_bellfield@yahoo.dk if you want to talk?...

---

• 100% thread-safe COM based plugin interface
  
• Plugin notifications:
  
  • when an incoming conversation has been started
    
  • when an outgoing conversation has been started
    
  • when a conversation has ended
    
  • when a message has been received
    
  • when a message has been sent
• 'Invisible' messages: messages that MSN Messenger won't see, but BotDK's plugins will
  
• Automatically send (hidden) messages from plugins to remote users with the ability to customize the message font
  
• Automatically send messages from plugins to the local MSN Messenger user with the ability to customize the message font
  
• ...

Sounds great, im sure theres going to be loads of new Bots/Responders whatever soon.

Any pointers on the Winsock hooking, i've been trying to into how to do it, but with little luck

Will it also parse MsgPlus! Tags like (!IP)?

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Will it also parse MsgPlus! Tags like (!IP)?

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quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Will it also parse MsgPlus! Tags like (!IP)?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dempsey
Messenger Plus! won't parse them as it doesn't parse the output of plugins, but mrhuge may add the parsing of some similar commands I don't know

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quote:

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Originally posted by mrhuge

quote:

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Originally posted by Dempsey
Messenger Plus! won't parse them as it doesn't parse the output of plugins, but mrhuge may add the parsing of some similar commands I don't know

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The power of this plugin is, that you can now create your own commands/tags in a format which you can choose yourself. A BotDK plugin gets every message before MSN Messenger gets it, so a BotDK plugin can do parsing and command handling of it's own.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mrhuge

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Will it also parse MsgPlus! Tags like (!IP)?

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You can parse any message with a BotDK plugin, because your plugin will get the message before MSN Messenger and MSGPlus! do.

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quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
I was thinking of that because I like the scripting host plugin.
With that plugin you could make custom tags and with the botDK you could make a fully featured bot.
So please hurry with the development, because I like the idea.

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is your plugin based on msn proxy?? the thing i didnt like about yours and the reason why is started writting mine is that to add a bot you would need as requirements too many things: msgplus! msnproxy AND the plugin dll AND besides that, telling the user to configure his/her msn to user socket4, which most regular users would be scared of doing, and when you have a connection through the proxy if you happen to close the proxy you would lose your connection
im not using hooks, but frm what i read, i dont completely understand why you need to set msn to use socket4, since your intercepting API calls, firewalls do it without configuring anything in every single app

good luck
hope to see your plugin soon, keep up the good work

quote:

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Originally posted by Hilikus
is your plugin based on msn proxy?? the thing i didnt like about yours and the reason why is started writting mine is that to add a bot you would need as requirements too many things: msgplus! msnproxy AND the plugin dll AND besides that, telling the user to configure his/her msn to user socket4, which most regular users would be scared of doing, and when you have a connection through the proxy if you happen to close the proxy you would lose your connection
im not using hooks, but frm what i read, i dont completely understand why you need to set msn to use socket4, since your intercepting API calls, firewalls do it without configuring anything in every single app

good luck
hope to see your plugin soon, keep up the good work

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awesome!!

I've updated the opening post. I've released the first beta version of BotDK .

I installed it and the first thing I noticed was that it's incompatible with StuffPlug-NG, and I don't know if it could be BotDK, but suddenly all my custom emoticons are gone.

I like the idea, but I'm going to leave it alone until I can use it together with SPNG, sorry...

quote:

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Originally posted by |\/|artij|\|
I installed it and the first thing I noticed was that it's incompatible with StuffPlug-NG, and I don't know if it could be BotDK, but suddenly all my custom emoticons are gone.

I like the idea, but I'm going to leave it alone until I can use it together with SPNG, sorry...

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quote:

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Originally posted by mrhuge

quote:

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Originally posted by |\/|artij|\|
I installed it and the first thing I noticed was that it's incompatible with StuffPlug-NG, and I don't know if it could be BotDK, but suddenly all my custom emoticons are gone.

I like the idea, but I'm going to leave it alone until I can use it together with SPNG, sorry...

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Hmz, I don't think that BotDK can cause your custom emoticons to disappear, because it doesn't do anything with them.

In which way is it incompatible with StuffPlug-NG? Please give me some more details on that, so I can solve the problem. Thanks for your feedback.

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quote:

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Originally posted by |\/|artij|\|
Incompatibility with StuffPlug-NG is in the way that SPNG's menu's hang at "loading" status all the time, and it's options aren't properly loaded all the time. I guess that this happens because of the fact that both plugins hook Messenger, and in that way interfere with each other.

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i dont know if its supposed to or not but when i tick a box next to a plugin and then close the config window and reopen it its unticked

quote:

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Originally posted by Lee Jeffery
i dont know if its supposed to or not but when i tick a box next to a plugin and then close the config window and reopen it its unticked

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wow man, thats impresive
you did a great job, and the docs with pics and everything
looking forward to try it. as soon as i finish mine i will, but after seeing this one mine's gonna look lame

Thanks for the compliment Hilikus!

I'm thinking about changing the way BotDK works a little. Actually I think it would be even nicer if you could turn MsgPlus! plugins into auto-responders or bots using BotDK.

My idea is to make BotDK a DLL which you can redistribute with your MsgPlus! plugin. In your MsgPlus! plugin you would need to create an object which implements BotDK's IPlugin (as it's called now) interface (in VB/C# .NET plugins you can just let the MsgPlus! plugin object implement BotDK's IPlugin interface as well). Then the MsgPlus! plugin would need to register that object with the BotDK DLL, which will then generate the callbacks on the IPlugin interface.

This way, the features of MsgPlus! and BotDK can be combined into one MsgPlus! plugin.

Please tell me what you think about this idea (I hope I've been able to explain myself properly and understandably).

do you need vb expirience? ( i dont have a clue how to work it! ) can anyone help me?

the sample plugin doesnt work for me

quote:

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Originally posted by Lee Jeffery
the sample plugin doesnt work for me

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quote:

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Originally posted by super-schaf
do you need vb expirience? ( i dont have a clue how to work it! ) can anyone help me?

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This plugin sounds great at first, but it's too difficult for the general public to use so in my opinion it isn't that great and won't be too popular. But that's just my opinion.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jaguar
This plugin sounds great at first, but it's too difficult for the general public to use so in my opinion it isn't that great and won't be too popular. But that's just my opinion.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
This isn't made for the n00b people in the first place....

This is made for those who want something "extra" to develop plugins; It is made for those who also create normal Plus! plugins...

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Is there a way to send a message with the same font as a normal message?

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Is there a way to send a message with the same font as a normal message?

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Ah, I see...
Just another question, does it parse tags like (!IP) yet?
(I haven't tested it yet cause i lack the time to do so...)

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Ah, I see...
Just another question, does it parse tags like (!IP) yet?
(I haven't tested it yet cause i lack the time to do so...)

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quote:

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Originally posted by mrhuge

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Will it also parse MsgPlus! Tags like (!IP)?

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You can parse any message with a BotDK plugin, because your plugin will get the message before MSN Messenger and MSGPlus! do.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Ah, I see...
Just another question, does it parse tags like (!IP) yet?
(I haven't tested it yet cause i lack the time to do so...)

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He already answered that question from you:

quote:

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Originally posted by mrhuge

quote:

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Originally posted by TheGeek
Will it also parse MsgPlus! Tags like (!IP)?

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You can parse any message with a BotDK plugin, because your plugin will get the message before MSN Messenger and MSGPlus! do.

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...and further posts....


--------

BotDK is a layer between MSN Messenger/Messenger Plus!/plugins and you. So there don't have to be a real parsing of those tags. If you want to use them, simply use them like you would in any normal plugin. After those BotDK plugins are finished doing their job the text is handled by Messenger Plus! and its plugins, meaning tags will be parsed...

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quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised

quote:

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Originally posted by Jaguar
This plugin sounds great at first, but it's too difficult for the general public to use so in my opinion it isn't that great and won't be too popular. But that's just my opinion.

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This isn't made for the n00b people in the first place....

This is made for those who want something "extra" to develop plugins; It is made for those who also create normal Plus! plugins...

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your plugin example works I got it loaded.
but no responce at all in the conversation >________<

i cant get a refence to this dam dll

quote:

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Originally posted by zero_kool
how would you use this in vb6?

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quote:

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Originally posted by mrhuge

quote:

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Originally posted by super-schaf
do you need vb expirience? ( i dont have a clue how to work it! ) can anyone help me?

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You need to have experience with a COM-compatible programming language.
However, you can't use Visual Basic 6, because VB6 doesn't support Free threaded COM objects. You can use VB.NET instead.
Documentation on how to create BotDK plugins is located in [install folder]\Documentation (for example: C:\Program Files\BotDK\Documentation).

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sorry but i got 3 errors
Warning    3    Type of parameter 'recFontInfo' is not CLS-compliant.    C:\Documents and Settings\brenda pompu\Desktop\VBDotNetExample\BotPlugin.vb    70    142    VBDotNetExample
Warning    2    Type of parameter 'objPluginHost' is not CLS-compliant.    C:\Documents and Settings\brenda pompu\Desktop\VBDotNetExample\BotPlugin.vb    27    33    VBDotNetExample


i follow the registering of the dll's and its not working ahaha

Hello,
(this is my first post on this forum... so hi everybody)

So, let's see the problem:

For the "story", I installed BotDK, compiled the VBDotNetExample bot and loaded it with BotDK...... All went good, the about and config box opened correctly but...... the auto-answer function didn't work!
(I also modified that after, and conclude that the tweaks in OnMessageReceive/Sent, and OnIncoming/Outgoing convers were not working)

So, from there, I decided to make my own bot with VC++6
after a moment (I didn't touch VC for ages, so I'm not an expert lol), I noted the same problem: My functions (I mean what i call) in the ShowAboutBox and config functions are called correctly (for ex., a messagebox),
But all the functions in the OnMessageReceived/Send etc... are not executed!!!!

so my question is here :

So i was wondering what was going wrong (i asked myself if I did'nt make an error), and finally, I noted that the problem come from BotDK :

With DebugView, when BotDK is loaded (at the MSN connection), I got these debug string:

"[3000] Hooking recv failed!
[3000] Hooking send failed!
[3000] BotDK loaded successfully!
"
So, i conclude that it's a problem with BotDK that don't manage to hook the Socket... (and so, the OnMessageReceive/sent etc functions are not called by BotDK)

Do you know what can I do to solve this problem? or am I doing something wrong?

hoping to be clear, thank you for your help !


PS: if someone knows how to make a plugin with DELPHI, I'm interressted

Moreover, if you know another (better?) manner to intercept (and modify) the messages that are sent and/or received by MSN, I'm curious to know! (I heard that intercepting messages with hooks is very difficult)


and sorry for my bad english :/

Hi allz,
I've just installed your PlugIn but I have a problem...
I have registered my dll under windows and followed the instruction 2 make your Plugin able to use my dll but when i try to open the about Dialog Box the program crash. It do the same even if I try to configure and It doesn't execute the load function when i load It!!!
Why???

I Have To move my dll in a specific folder???

Thanks for the answer
Ax
(I know that my english is orrible, excuse me for it)

Re-Edited: Ah, i used VC++6 to compile my dll...

Hi AxelTB

Seeing your problem, I think that:
Maybe you've not indicated correctly what is the ProgID of you PlugIn  to BotDK! I mean, in the registry (I've tried to set a wrong ProgID, and when you do it, in fact, the about box and plugin box make the program crash)
If you want to know what is the progID, you can use COMExplorer (VC++ add .1 at the end of the progID : for ex. YourBot.Bot.1)

Or maybe the problem is in VC++ (I noted that VC++, in the header file YourAtlObjetName.h, return by doing
return E_NOTIMPL;
for example:

code:

---

public:
    STDMETHOD(Initialize)(IPluginHost * objPluginHost)
    {
        return E_NOTIMPL;
    }

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I've added the .1 at the end of the name and i discovered that it is the real name of the class by a program but I still have the same problem...
I've also changed all E_NOTIMPL with 0 as you said but it was useless...

I tried to use a debugger program (Hackman Debugger) and at the start of messenger he to me too: "Hooking recv failed!Hooking send failed!BotDK loaded successfully!", but it doesn't seems to be the cause of my problem...

Do anyone have a full-working plugin or everyone have problem using it?

Hmmm... strange!
Yes I've a working plugin, coded with VC++6 too! (hm... working, not exactly, as I have this problem with the OnMessageReceive/Sent functions etc... but no crash, and the AboutBox and ShowConfig functions are working correctly for me)

for the pb in OnMessageReceive/sent maybe it's a cause of the problem in hooking recv/send.... but I don't know if these debug string are really ... exact

because
"[3000] Hooking recv failed!
[3000] Hooking send failed!
[3000] BotDK loaded successfully!"
sounds strange:  "successfully" ? uh? and what about the hooks error ? lol ....

I would appreciate any help from MrHuge, I think he knows

From MSN Messenger version 7 BotDK has a problem hooking the Winsock functions which means it can't intercept messages. I've already found a solution for this, but I've been to busy doing other things (baught a house, stuff like that ) that, until now, I didn't have the time to correct this problem.

I also have a new version lying around for quite some time which is a little easier to use (I think), which I'd like to finish and upload. Actually it's completely ready, I've only got to finish off the documentation. I'm thinking about solving this problem in this new version and upload that one.

Basically, the big change is, that it's not a plugin anymore but just an ActiveX DLL which you can use in your MSGPlus! plugins. This means that you will be able to combine the power of the MSGPlus! plugin API and the BotDK API in one plugin.

Ok,

I hope you had no problem with you house... and that all is going right!

Thank you for your explanation, since i was thinking that the problem was coming from "me"...

So, I'll wait for the moment, and thank you for your work
Just impatient to see the new version / problem corrected!

I'm looking forward your new plugin...

I'll be sure to try this out as soon as you upload the new version! Keep it up.

Just wondering if you're planning on making BotDK open source, as you did for MSN Proxy, as I'm interested to see how you did the winsock hooking, as I had an (unsuccessful) attempt t doing it a while ago.