Set Digsby Status from Command Line

July 1, 2008 by
 

There was a request today on the Digsby forums about setting the status based on a twitter feed.  I thought this was a great idea, since this is something I could use.  Normally I don’t use status message at all – but I do twitter.

I set to work figuring out how to set the status from outside the application.  I went with the same approach that I had used before, simulating a local user via Win32 Window messages.  This is a great solution because it doesn’t interfere with any actions that a user may be performing locally – you don’t even know it is happening.

I broke this project up into the two logical components, the part that gets the twitter feed and the part that actually does the work of setting the status.  What I’ve come up with is a little command line utility to set the status.

It can be used like so:

DigsbyStatus.exe "This is my new status message"

Or, to clear the status:

DigsbyStatus.exe ""

Quotes are needed as to simulate a “blank” argument.  The status classification can’t be changed, so you will still be available or away based on the protocol and the last state of the computer.  I figure someone else might find this useful to, say, update status based on some unsupported media player.

Download: DigsbyStatus_100.zip [10KB]

Comments

7 Comments on Set Digsby Status from Command Line

  1. Brian Dylan on Wed, 2nd Jul 2008 1:24 PM

    2. Thanks for the utility, Dave.

    I have utilized it to have Musikcube update Digsby’s status.

    Details are here:
    http://www.briandylan.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47:digsby-music-status&catid=34:blogs

  2. Dave Amenta .com » Blog Archive » DigTweet Graphical Application on Sun, 20th Jul 2008 3:25 PM

    3. [...] DigsbyStatus is included. Posted in Software [...]

  3. Andrew on Fri, 24th Jul 2009 10:54 AM

    4. Hi David

    Came across your site while trying to get digsby to interact with musikcube (as in the above “broken” link). I have it sort of working however musikcube allows you to pass variables – i.e. digsbystatus $ARTIST. If the artist has a space in their name it only returns the first word. Is there a way of passing variables in your application – or alternatively if you have the source available?

    Thanks
    Andrew

  4. Andrew on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 5:40 AM

    5. nevermind – got it working – simply: digsbystatus “$ARTIST, $TITLE” in tunage and you have now playing as your status

  5. Jeff Klawiter on Thu, 21st Oct 2010 10:58 AM

    6. Any chance the source code for this could be published or could it be updated to set the general status (most notably, Away). I’m sick of digsby not setting to away when I lock my computer.

  6. Dave on Wed, 3rd Nov 2010 4:38 PM

    7. @Jeff – I can’t see a way to set the away state. I also think this method is failing on new Digsby builds, so I’ll have to revisit and fix it.

  7. Jason on Mon, 22nd Nov 2010 1:48 AM

    8. Any way that it could also allow us to set the state as well? Specifically, it would be awesome to be able to have a way to have digsby set itself to offline via command line.