cb22 | # 1 | 2011-01-09, 17:01 | Report

I figured if I created a thread about porting WhatsApp to the N900, and what I've discovered so far, others could share their knowledge or decided to take a look.

I'm studying for an exam that's in a week or so, but I fired up WireShark, got my trusty Nokia E66 connected to WiFi (with no SIM card, to force WhatsApp to use WiFi) and started logging packets.

Lo and behold, what I got in return cheered me up. It appeared to be nothing other than bog standard XMPP! Maybe, just maybe, it won't be too much trouble to port it over. They might have some proprietary extensions to lock other clients out, but I can't really recall. As I said, exam > WhatsApp

Dr.Marcial | # 2 | 2011-01-09, 17:12 | Report

good luck on exam, after that start working !

that's great news i guess , we will have to wait and see

efekt | # 3 | 2011-01-09, 17:40 | Report

Isn't WhatsApp a property software, e.g not open source? Wouldn't converting it without the authorization of the WhatsApp team be infringement of rights?

cb22 | # 4 | 2011-01-09, 17:50 | Report

IIRC, it has been shown and tested that reverse engineering proprietary protocols for interoperability is perfectly legal. See things like the open source clients for AIM / MSN / etc.

bigears5000 | # 5 | 2011-01-09, 17:50 | Report

Might be worth talking to creator of this thread http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65168 and see if you can get advice/help.I know it's bbm, but what's app is mentioned.

Dr.Marcial | # 6 | 2011-01-09, 19:30 | Report

I was wondering if Symbian 3 has whatsapp it mostlikely was built in Qt, and if that is true cant we port it to n900 if the source could be available?

i know its propetery, but some reverse engeenering might help the process

just sating

http://www.whatsapp.com/nokia/

buchanmilne | # 7 | 2011-02-02, 08:14 | Report

Can you provide the capture file? What SRV record did it look up to connect to? The convention is to use the _xmpp-client._tcp.<domain> SRV record to publish servers clients should connect to. For example:

$ dig +short _xmpp-client._tcp.google.com SRV
20 0 5222 talk3.l.google.com.
20 0 5222 talk4.l.google.com.
20 0 5222 talk1.l.google.com.
5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
20 0 5222 talk2.l.google.com.

What "domain" does it use for Jabber IDs (e.g., if you have a WhatsApp account, what Jabber ID would you use in a standard Jabber client to access the account)?

How does the application register accounts? By the Jabber registration feature?

Understanding how the client works does not necessarily help much in "porting" it over, which traditionally means, making changes to the existing source code to work on a different platform.

It may help in writing a telepathy plugin to make the protocol accessible to the conversations app on N900 (and other apps on other platforms). But, if the protocol is actually XMPP, then there's no need for a separate plugin, if we have the details I asked for above.

Of course, it seems WhatsApp isn't interested in XMPP inter-operation, or they would have made these details available on their website.

werks | # 8 | 2011-02-26, 04:41 | Report

any progress on this?

godofwar424 | # 9 | 2011-04-16, 02:52 | Report

Hey guys.

Please check my thread that I just created, it relates to this but to save me reposting the same thing here is the link

Qt version of PingChat!

Thanks

ZogG | # 10 | 2011-11-04, 12:20 | Report

as i understand it uses something like areacodephonenumber@s.whatsapp.net
e.g.
9725454545454@s.whatsapp.net
where 972 is israel code and 54545454 is number (it deletes 0 in the begining)