Monday, July 04, 2011

SkyDrive .Net API (Unofficial, but since there's no official one available...)

CodePlex - SkyDrive .Net API Client

"Project Description

SkyDrive .Net API Client allows developers to easily integrate Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive online storage and sharing services into their own applications. It's developed in C#.

What is this?

This project is an open source client for Windows Live SkyDrive written for the Microsoft .NET Framework. This is NOT an official, Microsoft API! However, this library will greatly facilitate the development of 3rd party applications for developers already familiar with the Microsoft .NET technology stack.

How does it work?

At the time of this writing, as far as I know, there is no official API to use for SkyDrive. However, there are several legacy applications (Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office) and open source tools (SkyDrive Simple Viewer for WebDAV) which are already using some sort of, non-documented web services like SkyDocsService, Live API and SkyDrive WebDAV. This project integrates/wraps those web services into one, single service client in order to provide a super set of all the features available -one by one- in those individual web services.

..."

I've been waiting, and waiting and waiting for an official SkyDrive API. Since SkyDrive was released in 2007 (yes, SkyDrive has been available since 2007), I've been whining about the lack of an API. Sure there's unofficial ways to work with it, third party utilities, etc, but lack of an official and supported API bugs me. And it's not like Microsoft isn't using some API in their growing list of services and app that use SkyDrive. sigh...

Anyway... This project looks interesting and seems to be constructed in such a way as to if there ever is an official API, it could be updated to use it. Using an unofficial API is always a risk, but if it's the only game in town...

2 comments:

Joe said...

Thank you! We all want and need an official SkyDrive API. I have been asking about this for some time.

This API client is excellent and will fill the gap for as long as it takes for MS to provide an official solution.

Well done!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info, keeps me from searching further. I am dissapointed that Microsoft has to date refused to publish an API for SkyDrive and have been looking at the Codeproject API as a possible solution. It of course, comes with strings and I'd prefer to use something directly from the publisher. Again, thanks.

Dodge