Hotmail: User Authentication and Finding Contacts Using PHP

Question

I am trying to write a PHP script that will allow me to do two things:

• Allow users to use their Hotmail (I think it's called "Live" now?) For authentication on the website

• Get a list of contacts with verified users from Hotmail.

I have tried the internet for the past 6 hours, looking for at least a working example that I can modify / expand to do the above two things. There are several dozens of similar questions asked here, for example, there are more of the proposed answers on SO - NONE (admittedly, some of the questions were several years old).

I tried the Microsoft website and downloaded the latest version of my API, which seems to be developing quite alarmingly. Finally, I managed to find an API that was not deprecated (yet?) .

I followed the instructions, and when I tried to authenticate, I received a reward for my actions:

We're unable to complete your request Windows Live ID is experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again later. 

I immediately tried the online version of the demo and it is perhaps not surprising that this worked like a charm.

Aside, I managed to implement the same functionality for Yahoo and GMail, using their OPEN API, for an hour each. Now it is possible that my open-minded hatred of all things belonging to the property (sorry for Microsoft) makes me lose the plot a bit.

Someone in ACTUALLY (in 2012) managed to get a working sample in PHP, which allows you to:

• Hotmail user authentication (live?)
• Email Search for Hotmail User Contacts

If you have, a code snippet or a link to where I can find such a snippet would be very helpful, as I still waste all day trying to work with the Microsoft Live API through PHP.

PS: No, I'm not interested in OpenInviter, it's broken.

Answer 1

I wrote my own oauth library based on one array for each service provider. this array contains all the data needed to authenticate and retrieve user data. the array I use for msdn (i.e. hotmail, outlook, xbox, msn):

 $msdn = array ( 'oauth_version' => '2', 'oauth_method' => 'GET', 'redirect_user_params' => array ( 'url' => 'https://oauth.live.com/authorize', 'response_type' => 'code', 'http_params' => array ( 'url', 'client_id', 'redirect_uri', 'response_type', 'scope', 'state' ) ), 'obtain_access_token_params' => array ( 'url' => 'https://oauth.live.com/token', 'grant_type' => 'authorization_code', 'http_params' => array ( 'url', 'client_id', 'client_secret', 'code', 'grant_type', 'redirect_uri', 'scope' ) ), 'scope' => 'wl.signin wl.basic', 'obtain_user_data_params' => array ( 'url' => 'https://apis.live.net/v5.0/me', 'http_params' => array ( 'url', 'access_token', 'scope' ) ), 'client_id' => 'xxxxx', // = oauth_consumer_key in oauth 1.0 lingo 'client_secret' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 'readme_url' => 'http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243647.aspx' ); 

The parameters for each of the three oauth steps (i.e., “redirect user”, “get access token” and “get user data”) are in the http_params arrays. in the case of msdn, these parameters fall into the query string of the url request that I send with curl (since msdn only accepts GET, not POST).

I have not tried to get the user's contacts address book, but that would just be an extension of the scope element with any additional information that you need (documented here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243646.aspx ) . as you can see from the http_params array, the scope parameter is used at each of the three oauth stages.

Answer 2

Try importing Hotmail / MSN / Live on the CloudSponge test drive to make sure you hope so.

If it works for you, you can use our widget or our API. If you want to use the API, we have a PHP wrapper already written for your convenience.

Answer 3

Please confirm your callback url with http: // if you just put www.domain.com you will get this problem.