What should I use to use ICQ with Python?

Question

I want to write a script to support my clients online. I decided to use ICQ-protocol for this (kind a icq-bot). I have 25 icq uins. I need something that will be able to:

1. Make them all online
2. If some uins got disconnected - reconnect them.
3. Use proxy to login, because ICQ server could not accept connection from one IP.
4. Receive some messages and answer on them.

What should I use to do this?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

I suggest using XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber) instead of ICQ, really.

It's a free protocoll, and there are python APIs for it, like jabber.py and xmpppy.

xmpppy is as easy as:

jid = xmpp.protocol.JID('your id')
cl = xmpp.Client(jid.getDomain(),debug=[])
cl.connect()
cl.auth(jid.getNode(), 'your password')
cl.send(xmpp.protocol.Message('reciever id', 'your text'))

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Also, you can use so called transports to use XMPP to transparently send/reviece messages from other protocols like ICQ, MSN, AOL etc, which may be what you need if you really need ICQ.

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Otherwise, I only know about NanoICQ, which claims to be a python based ICQ client, I don't know if the project is still active...