Table of contents:

Introduction

The Address Book Service (abservice), also known as the Address Book Clearing House (ABCH) is a SOAP (XML) Web Service. It was introduced with MSNP8.

It manages the link(s) between the E-mail Service Address Book and the Forward List (FL).

It's default HTTP URL is http://contacts.msn.com/abservice/abservice.asmx. It's default HTTPS URL is https://contacts.msn.com/abservice/abservice.asmx.

Related: Contact Sharing Service (for other List's members).

Authentication

This service requires Passport Authentication, either using Passport SSI 1.4 or Passport SOAP (RST).

There are two ways to authenticate.

Using Cookies

The easiest way to authenticate is by setting the MSPAuth cookie to the MSPAuth value from your Passport Compact Token (everything after t= and before &p=)

This can be done using a token for either contacts.msn.com or messenger.msn.com.

Using SOAP

Clients from MSNP15 and up use SOAP to authenticate with the service. See the ABAuthHeader section for more info.

This method of authentication only works with a token for contacts.msn.com.

Actions

All actions listed have the prefix of http://www.msn.com/webservices/AddressBook/.

Actions that we don't know much about

Shared Templates

This is used by all Actions listed, as far as we know. The following also applies to the Contact Sharing Service.

Client/Request

The following sub-headings are XML elements for the client's request.

soap:Envelope

This element has four attributes:

soap:Header

This element only serves to host the <ABApplicationHeader> and <ABAuthHeader> elements.

ABApplicationHeader

This element has only one attribute:

This element has three children:

ABAuthHeader

This element has only one attribute:

This element has two children:

soap:Body

Your request element and it's children goes here.

Server/Response

The following sub-headings are XML elements for the server's response.

soap:Envelope

This element has three attributes:

soap:Header

This element only serves to host the <ServiceHeader> element.

ServiceHeader

This element has only one attribute:

This element has five children:

soap:Body

This element contains the server's response elements and their children for the action.