PHP APIs for Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo?

Question

I am a PHP developer who is kind of in a pickle. I'm trying to locate and/or build an API capable of speaking to Hotmail, Yahoo and GMAIL in order to retrieve contact lists (with the user's consent, of course). The one I'm having the most trouble finding is a Hotmail API.

Where would I start to look as far as finding either a working, stable API or the steps I could take to developing one for hotmail? Is there one that covers all of these bases that I could implement? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

EDIT: I did manage to get a few services up, however, I've been using Open Inviter for at least one client project, and it seems to perform well.

Solution 1

Some pointers:

• Gmail: Google Contacts Data API
• Yahoo:
  • Address Book API (deprecated)
  • Contacts API
• Hotmail: Windows Live Contacts API

Most of the scripts, etc. I found didn't really work. There's a commercial one which uses scraping to retrieve the contacts but I think those attempts are rather flawed. The above links should give you an example of how to access the address books on each service.

Solution 2

Plaxo has an API widget to import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail. You can view a demo of it in action here. It previously had a small issue with IE7 (last checked half a year ago), but if its resolved it might suite your needs.

Solution 3

Rapleaf might have something for you:

http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/4436.html

It appears that this service plays cat and mouse with some providers, as not all e-mail providers offer a stable API for communicating with their services. (It would undermine their business model.) So, if you use these and the e-mail provider breaks the chain somehow, you're broken until Rapleaf catches up.

Comments

[Till]

Plaxo is also evil. I wouldn't want to move my contacts through their platform.

[Jay Gibb]

Plaxo doesn't support this widget any more: blog.plaxo.com/2011/08/plaxo-widget-retirement

[Dan]

The Windows Live Contacts API is now the outlook.com api and it's found here msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826535.aspx

[Deepanshu Goyal]

is there any api to import contacts from plaxo ?