Hackdiary

When the iPhone OS 3.0 came out with new Mobile Me features allowing you to remotely discover the location of your iPhone and send it a message and an alarm, I hoped that there’d be an API. While there’s no official way to access it, the enterprising Tyler Hall and Sam Pullara dug out their HTTP sniffers and figured out how the javascript on me.com talks to its backend service.

Their code is written in PHP and Java respectively, two languages I’m not particularly comfortable in. Translating from their source code, I’ve produced a ruby version and packaged it as a very simple gem. It lacks real documentation or elegant error handling, but it’s easy to figure out.

Use it like this to locate your phone:

$ sudo gem install mattb-findmyiphone --source https://gems.github.com

>> require 'rubygems' ; require 'findmyiphone'
>> i = FindMyIphone.new(username,password)
>> i.locateMe
=> {"status"=>1, "latitude"=>51.546544, "time"=>"8:06 AM", "date"=>"July 23, 2009", "accuracy"=>162.957953, "isLocationAvailable"=>true, "isRecent"=>true, "isLocateFinished"=>true, "statusString"=>"locate status available", "isAccurate"=>false, "isOldLocationResult"=>true, "longitude"=>-0.05744}

And to send a message:

>> i.sendMessage("Unimportant message")
=> {"status"=>1, "time"=>"8:17 AM", "date"=>"July 23, 2009", "unacknowledgedMessagePending"=>true, "statusString"=>"message sent"}

Finally, if you look in the examples directory you’ll find a short script that uses the location data to update Fire Eagle via its API. Fill in the example YAML files with the appropriate credentials and it’ll do the rest.

Of course the code’s all open source and contributions via Github are very welcome.