Log in/out of Gmail chat programmatically, clicking Gmail's span "links"

Question

At work, I use Gmail's chat, since it's encrypted and logs chats without installing or saving anything to the hard drive. At home, I use Pidgin. When I log into GMail at home, I have to log out of chat, or messages will end up in the wrong place. When I log into GMail at work, I have to log back in to chat.

In other words, when I start Firefox at home, I want Gmail's chat disabled automatically. When I start Firefox at work, I want Gmail's chat enabled automatically.

Is there a way to use a Greasemonkey script or similar to force logging in and logging out on specific machines? It would seem simple enough; just follow a URL or simulate clicking a link. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn't use actual links.

While logged out:

<span tabindex="0" role="link" action="si" class="az9OKd">Sign into chat</span>

While logged in, in drop-down menu:

<div tabindex="-1" id=":1mj" role="menuitem" class="oA" value="si"><div class="uQ c6"/>Sign into chat</div>

<div tabindex="-1" id=":8f" role="menuitem" class="oA" value="sia"><div class="uQ c5"/>Sign into AIM®</div>

<div tabindex="-1" id=":8e" role="menuitem" class="oA" value="so"><div class="uQ df"/>Sign out of chat</div>

At bottom of page:

<span id=":im" class="l8 ou" tabindex="0" role="link">turn off chat</span>

<span id=":im" class="l8 ou" tabindex="0" role="link">turn on chat</span>

Anyone know how to "click" these non-links with JavaScript or access their functions? I would imagine that "so" means "sign out", "si" means "sign in", and "sia" means "sign in AIM". Can I somehow call these actions directly?

Is there some other alternative for disabling chat?

Answer 1

I use gmail chat both within a gmail window and using Adium, and when a friend initiates a chat I get his or her message in both windows, so being logged in in two separate places isn't a problem.

Does this not work for you?

EDIT: As the commenter said below, you could decipher gmail's obfuscated javascript to try and find out how the links are attached to javascript functions, and which functions are called. Then you don't need to simulate a click on the link, you just need to call the appropriate javascript function.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if you're aware, but you can end a Gmail session remotely. Click the link that says this at the bottom of your Gmail page:

Last Account Activity: blah blah Details

Answer 3

Can people still chat to you if it's not even displayed?

I only have a couple of contacts on gchat, so can't test easily...

    window.addEventListener('load', function() {
  if (unsafeWindow.gmonkey) {
    unsafeWindow.gmonkey.load('1.0', function(gmail) {
      function logOffChat() {
     var leftPane = gmail.getNavPaneElement().childNodes[0];
     var chat = leftPane.childNodes[3];

     chat.id = 'googleChatElement';
 chat.parentNode.removeChild(chat);
      }

      logOffChat();

    });
  }
}, true);

My guess is, it'll still run everything in the background and you'll appear logged in...

Answer 4

May be I do not understand. But can you try using Selenium to work this out somehow? Its an framework to automate functional testing in web apps.

Answer 5

Adding *chatenabled.mail.google.com* to Adblock's filter list prevents Gmail chat from connecting. This will solve my problem, even though I wasn't able to figure out how to click the "link".

Answer 6

I know the original post is old, but I'm posting here for reference.

var evt = document.createEvent("MouseEvents"); evt.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, false, false, false, false, 0, null); YourElement.dispatchEvent(evt);

dispatchEvent reference from: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/element.dispatchEvent