Steam protocol

[Goraf]

Corak: so first guess will be: don't build Miranda by yourself, use provided one and then compare the ruslts

[Wishmaster]

Corak: For example: here and here and here: All are the result of a memory corruption somewhere in Steam. This can result in crashes in different places. And all have HttpRequest::Send in common.

And yes, as goraf said, please try officially released build.

[Corak]

Goraf, Wishmaster:

I moved to debug build (with stop points) because I'm using Visual Studio, with sources, attach to process and investigate - Ghazan asked me to do it to investigate, so I don't go to official builds, when there still crashes and new errors. When there will be no more - i will return to official build. And some OLD ones you described - are now fixed, and dont repeat anymore.
And I'm always updating from SVN sources, when I see some commit/update of bug that "seems" fixed. So all is organized, and there is no false alarms.

> All are the result of a memory corruption somewhere in Steam. This can result in crashes in different places. And all have HttpRequest::Send in common.

Ok, then they need to be linked between (have link) if u are SURE they are the SAME source of problem. But still they are independant  - some appeared long time ago, some are appearing only now and old ones are not repeated.

[Wishmaster]

Okay, then ghazan can look into it

[Corak]

Yep, I'm waiting for him, when he will pass from celebrating 

Why it's a problem for you if I post there some certain proctocol related tickets/bugreports that can be fixed?

[Redeemer]

I really appreciate the work on this plugin. However, the current stable version is no longer working as of January 3rd (why is there a download link then anyway?). The development version (which only works in development versions) genereally works, but often spams my screen with "unknown login error" windows after it disconnects and KeepStatus tries to reconnect. The stable version used to use the popup plugin for this. These messages are annoying because as we all know, Steam servers are down more often than they are available.
I would really appreciate if you would just remove that pointless error window again.

[Robyer]

The stable version used to use the popup plugin for this.

It shows notification - when popup/yapp plugin is installed and enabled, it shows Popup. When it's not, it shows MessageBox. How is that different from the stable version?

And sure we can tweak this function, but I think it's important to notify user that connection failed for some reason.

[Vulpix]

but often spams my screen with "unknown login error" windows after it disconnects and KeepStatus tries to reconnect.

Out of curiosity, do you get disconnected a lot? Ever since the latest updates to steam in dev, I only really get disconnected once a week - on tuesdays, when steam goes down for maintenance and well nobody can do anything about that, of course.

[Ratha]

How stable is the Steam protocol in its current version? Are there any known issues that one should be aware of before trying it? Does it play nicely on a machine which has steam installed and running, or does it only work nicely for someone who isnt actively logged into their steam account?

I've been wanting to try this for awhile, as its incredibly problematic using Steam for messaging and very inconvenient to try and log steam chats, however i've had concerns of crashing, dropped messages, and miranda database corruption among other things. Would love any additional information that any of you could provide about this plugin's stability, features, and pitfalls (any known issues?) I wasnt able to find any documentation regarding how to use it, its version history/updates, or reliability.

Where does one get the latest version of the Steam protocol? Is it from the http://wiki.miranda-ng.org/index.php?title=Plugin:Steam/en page, or through the client (it looked like there was only an icon pack through the client unless im mistaken.)

[Vulpix]

For me:

It works great. Offline messages are working! (retrieval and sending of course). You cannot add anyone though, so friend add/removal should be handled from within the normal steam client.

I don't have any issues with disconnects. I mean, steam itself is not a very stable "chat" protocol so it does go off from time to time, but no biggie. Tuesday (periodical maintenance for valve) is a notable example.

You can get it from the client as well as from the page - make sure to get the development version (and you will need dev version of miranda for it too). You need to scroll down past the icon packs to see plugins, it's there.

I can recommend it; as long as you can live with having to add people via the normal client.

For miranda steam db corruption, I don't know. I had an issue once and the "fix" was to never run the "aggressive" search; only mark all messages as read. Been using steam for months now without any major issues though so...


tl;dr:

What works:
Message sending/receiving
Offline message sending/receiving
Userpage visibility
View of the game+server the user is currently playing (if any)
Steam guard login

What sorta works
Status changing (status message is not present and state doesn't change instantly, a limitation of steam protocol for web api I think?)

What does not work
Changing avatar (has to be done from steam client)
Adding a user (has to be done from steam client as well)

[Ratha]

Thanks for the fairly comprehensive response, thats basically the sort of information that I was looking for. The corruption issue is probably my main concern.. and i might consider running a separate client just for that reason. Disconnects are expected, and having to add/update steam settings from within the main client is hardly an issue for my needs. Realistically i just need logs and history in a much more friendly (and usable) form factor than steam provides (IE: Miranda / logging / hotkeys / customized interface), and that wont corrupt the rest of my 70 meg miranda chat history, and that hopefully wont drop/lose messages either.

How does the plugin handle being logged into Steam and being logged into messenger at the same time? If you're logged in on both do you get messages sent to both? Or just to one or the other? I could see that being a problem, but a decent remedy would be to simply not log into the main client i suppose. Ive not used the standard web client enough while logged into the friends client to know how that works.. but friends who swap back and forth between main client and web client do seem to drop/lose messages sometimes. Who knows whether thats the fault of mobile, or a closed window, or what. Guess the only way to really know is to use it for a couple of months and see.

[Robyer]

For miranda steam db corruption, I don't know. I had an issue once and the "fix" was to never run the "aggressive" search; only mark all messages as read.

This was already fixed. Problem is if you have some old messages with wrongly set flags -> then probably the aggresive search in DbChecker might cause corruption. But for new users there should be no problem at all, because new messages are saved correctly now. You can probably export your history, delete account, recreate it again, import history again and it should work.

tl;dr:What sorta works Status changing (status message is not present and state doesn't change instantly, a limitation of steam protocol for web api I think?)

Mobile/Web API doesn't support changing statuses. It determines Away/Not Available automatically by idle time. So this uses the plugin, and by setting idle time it changes the status. It is not applied immediatelly but it shouldn't take more than about a minute, so it's not a problem and works similary like FB plugin in this way.

What does not work - Adding a user (has to be done from steam client as well)

Searching for friends and requesting friendship works (at least I tried this now, approving might work too, but didn't tested), blocking users should work too. I have problem with adding my testing account though, but I wasn't able to add it via website either.
One thing to note - when searching/adding by ID, you can't put there the login, but you need to use the NUMERIC id, which you can see in URL of that user profile. But searching by nickname/name works...


Also, it should be ok to use the Steam plugin with running Steam client - messages should be received/sent (synced) correctly. You can test it by yourself, but I don't remember any issues related to this.

[Vulpix]

How does the plugin handle being logged into Steam and being logged into messenger at the same time? If you're logged in on both do you get messages sent to both? Or just to one or the other? I could see that being a problem, but a decent remedy would be to simply not log into the main client i suppose

No issue there, they work perfectly fine side-by-side.

[Ratha]

Ive had the plugin installed for a few hours, but so far the Steam plugin seems like it works fairly well. (However it did take a few hours to actually get it installed due to a misunderstanding / bug with how the Miranda updater works.. I copied the new Dev version of Miranda into my portable folder, ran it, then 'updated' my plugins. I didnt realize it at the time, but because my updater was set to 'stable only' it checked, found a 'new' stable update, and then downloaded that over the top of the dev version i had just made.. thus reverting them back to 0.95.4 which was causing the steam plugin not to properly pass Steam guard.)

The only thing that i dont like about it so far is that if you send a message through Miranda while Steam is open (but in offline mode) the plugin will still open a copy of the Steam chat window on your taskbar anyway. If i had to venture a guess at whats happening: When Steam is open, Miranda hooks into the Steam client and uses that to send the message. But when Steam is closed, it uses the mobile/web messenger protocol instead?

I also took the opportunity to try Metacontacts for the first time today but was disappointed to see that Metacontacts couldnt display the 'currently in a game' icon from the Steam plugin. Is this a limitation with Metacontacts, or a limitation with the Steam plugin, or perhaps because i still use the classic contact list?

[Ratha]

Additionally, is there a way to disable Miranda from logging (and displaying) the [User] "closed chat session" status message whenever a Steam contact closes their Steam chat window? I have friends who send one message and then close their window, so the conversation log becomes a bit difficult to read with every 2nd or 3rd line saying "closed chat session."

Im using TabSRMM and history++ for what thats worth, but i cant seem to find an option in there that actually disables either the display or the logging of that message. My setting for 'Global message log display' is: "Internal message log."

When viewing the history through History++ it seems to think that "closed chat session" is a [status change]. However, my option in TabSRMM > General tab > Other Options section > "Log status changes" is unchecked. Yahoo and ICQ dont display these kinds of status messages though so im wondering if this is a bug? Or is there an option somewhere that maybe i missed?