VKHS-0.5.3: Provides access to Vkontakte social network via public API

Copyright(c) Sergey Mironov <ierton@gmail.com> 2012
LicenseBSD-style (see the file LICENSE)
Maintainerierton@gmail.com
Stabilityexperimental
Portabilitynon-portable (multi-parameter type classes)
Safe HaskellNone
LanguageHaskell98

Web.VKHS

Description

VKHS

VKHS is written in Haskell and provides access to Vkontakte http://vk.com social network, popular mainly in Russia. Library can be used to login into the network as a standalone application (OAuth implicit flow as they call it). Interaction with user is not required. For now, vkhs offers limited error detection and no captcha support.

Following example illustrates basic usage (please fill client_id, email and password with correct values):

  import Web.VKHS.Login
  import Web.VKHS.API

  main = do
      let client_id = "111111"
      let e = env client_id "user@example.com" "password" [Photos,Audio,Groups]
      (Right at) <- login e

      let user_of_interest = "222222"
      (Right ans) <- api e at "users.get" [
            ("uids",user_of_interest)
          , ("fields","first_name,last_name,nickname,screen_name")
          , ("name_case","nom")
          ]
      putStrLn ans

client_id is an application identifier, provided by vk.com. Users receive it after registering their applications after SMS confirmation. Registration form is located here http://vk.com/editapp?act=create.

Internally, library uses small curl-based HTTP automata and tagsoup for jumping over relocations and submitting various 'Yes I agree' forms. Curl .so library is required for vkhs to work. I am using curl-7.26.0 on my system.

Debugging

To authenticate the user, vkhs acts like a browser: it analyzes html but fills all forms by itself instead of displaying pages. Of cause, would vk.com change html design, things stop working.

To deal with that potential problem, I've included some debugging facilities: changing:

writing

      (Right at) <- login e { verbose = Debug }

will trigger curl output plus html dumping to the current directory. Please, mail those .html to me if problem appears.

Limitations
  • Ignores 'Invalid password' answers
  • Captchas are treated as errors
  • Implicit-flow authentication, see documentation in Russian http://vk.com/developers.php for details
  • Probably, low speed due to restarting curl session on every request. But anyway, vk.com limits request rate to 3 per second.

Documentation