[Twisted-Python] Issues with creating switchboards with twisted.words.protocols.msn

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:47:03 +0200, Hermann Kaser <hermann.kaser at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I'm trying to write an MSN client but I've run into a problem: for
>some reason when I create a Switchboard and try to invite someone it
>sends the join command and the invitation command all together and the
>MSN server doesn't answer any of them. Here's the relevant bits of the
>code I have:
>
>class Switchboard(msn.SwitchboardClient):
>   def connectionMade(self):
>        self.key = self.factory.key
>        self.sessionID = self.factory.sessionID
>        self.userHandle = self.factory.userHandle
>        self.invite = self.factory.invite
>
>        msn.SwitchboardClient.connectionMade(self)
>
>        d = self.inviteUser(self.invite)
>        d.addCallback(self.Invited)
>
>    def Invited(self, *args):
>        print 'Running reply callback'
>
>And this is the ngrep stream after the XFR request
>
># send transfer request
>T 192.168.1.36:39816 -> 207.46.110.133:1863 [AP]
>  CHG 6 NLN..XFR 7 SB..
>
># get transfer response
>T 207.46.110.133:1863 -> 192.168.1.36:39816 [AP]
>  XFR 7 SB 64.4.37.58:1863 CKI 712606054.15830117.2511186..
>
>T 207.46.110.133:1863 -> 192.168.1.36:39816 [AP]
>  CHG 6 NLN 0..
>
>T 207.46.110.133:1863 -> 192.168.1.36:39816 [AP]
>  ILN 6 NLN [redacted]@hotmail.com [redacted screenname] 1073741856..
>
>T 192.168.1.36:44867 -> 64.4.37.58:1863 [AP]
>  USR 1 [my email] 712606054.15830117.2511186..CAL 2 [email of who i
>want to invite]..
>
>If I try to do the same process with pidgin for example, the stream
>looks exactly the same except the USR and CAL command are on separate
>packets, and the server responds to the USR command before the client
>sends the CAL command.
>
>Can anyone help me out figuring this out? I know you can send more
>than one command per packet, as seen in the first packet of the ngrep
>stream I posted, so I don't see why it wouldn't work to send the USR
>and CAL command together, but I suspect that not all commands may be
>stuck together. I stuck a time.sleep(20) between the calling
>msn.SwitchboardClient.connectionMade(self) and
>self.inviteUser(self.invite) to see if it was a timing issue but what
>happens is that the USR command gets buffered, and only when the
>script tries to send the CAL command does the socket actually write it
>out.

The way to do this is to let the reactor do some I/O in between the
calls.  Sleeping is almost the right idea (for debugging, at least),
but you need to do it in a way that cooperates with the reactor.  Try
putting the inviteUser call into a separate function and delaying its
execution a bit:

    def connectionMade(self):
        ...
        msn.SwitchboardClient.connectionMade(self)
        reactor.callLater(1, self._doinvite)

    def _doinvite(self):
        d = self.inviteUser(self.invite)
        d.addCallback(self.Invited)

If this works, then you may have demonstrated that USR and CAL
cannot be combined like this.  In that case, I'd say it's a bug
in Twisted's MSN support - it's the protocol's job to know things
like this, so the protocol should automatically buffer the CAL
if it knows a USR is going to be sent with it.

>
>Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, I've been digging
>around the documentation and the code but I can't seem to figure out
>why it's buffering the USR command and I don't know enough about the
>MSN protocol to know which commands need a unique packet and which
>ones can go with others.

It'd be interesting to see if pidgin has code to specifically avoid
combining USR and CAL (or USR and anything else).

Jean-Paul