Ehsanul Haque » world

Grab Yahoo class is in “coma”

Ehsan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:46:44 +0000

Grab Yahoo class was one of my works that has been used by many people around the world. Since I released this class I did not have a single month without comments or questions or suggestion about this class. Some people have copied the class, released it under their name (simply taking out my comments and added their own) to increase traffic to their site probably. But more importantly this class was appreciated by many. This was one of my finest contribution to the open source world.

How did I come up with this idea?

Well, I cannot remember which user group but in one of the groups I participate in had a discussion over if PHP can pull data off from places like Yahoo and use it for some purpose. Users on the group said this can be done (easily) with Java, but cannot be done with PHP. So I started researching over it. I found the cURL extension for PHP which seemed the good candidate to do the job. So I started working on it. After days of coding I finally wrote a script that will allow someone to login to their Yahoo account and fetch data from their address book. Initially I simply had a script but then I converted it to a Class allowing people to grab their address book, messenger list, number of new emails and calendar data.

What is happening now?

As per the title of this post this class is in “coma”. The reason is the update to Yahoo address book export mechanism. They have placed a CAPTCHA validation page in the export feature and, therefore, my Grab Yahoo class cannot go any further to grab the content it needs. Same thing happened with the LinkMeIn class which stopped working after LinkedIn added the CAPTCHA validation.

Why is this class in “coma”?

I have looked at the Yahoo address book export feature and found the CAPTCHA validation which will not allow the class to work. But I’ve not done my complete research on it yet, to make sure there is no other way to make this class functional. So, for the time being, this class is in “coma”. If I fail to revive this class I will probably officially pronounce it “dead”.

Can you help?

Yes, of course, you can. I hardly have time, these days, to sit with these side projects. If anyone from the community has time to research and help me revive this class it will be appreciated. Your name will go into the credit section of the class, well that is all I can offer!

Wania Haque, our sweet baby girl … Born 27th August 2009

Ehsan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:35:03 +0000

Tithi and I are proud to share the happiest moment of our life with the world. Our baby girl, Wania Haque, was born on 27th August 2009 at 2.56AM at Brampton Civic Hospital. Please give your blessing to our first child. Here are some pictures from those moments….

Others may forget you but never will I….

Ehsan — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:07:15 +0000

When night comes then sleep comes,
When sleep comes then dream comes,
When dream comes then you come,
But when you come then sleep and dream never come,
Give a little love, have a little hope,
Make this world a little better,
We can do it together,
And we can make it better only if we try,
People laugh and cry!
Some giveup, Some will try !
Some Say hi while Some Say bye !
Some honest others lie !
Others may forget you but never will I….

- Tithi forwarded me this poetry back in 2002 …. suddenly found it in one of my old documents!

Take this…we are not Minnows!

Ehsan — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 03:23:57 +0000

Bangladesh has proven again that we are not Minnows anymore in Cricketing world by defeating South Africa.

Courtesy cricinfo.com

Thanks to the blustering knock of Mohammad Ashraful Bangladesh reached 251. It was surely one of the best knock by Ashraful. Bangladeshi bowlers also played great. Their tight bowling secured the first ever victory for Bangladesh in Super Eight round of the World Cup. South Africa never came closer and ended up with loosing by 67 runs. We hope to see more win for our team and best wishes for the Tigers.

Courtesy cricinfo.com

Thank you.