title: How to decode the AOL Feedbag 1.1 file
body: <p>In AOL AIM 7, under the path "C:\Users\Prakash\AppData\Roaming\acccore\caches\users\UserA", there is a file "feedbag".</p>
  
  <p>The file is not in text format. Its format is as shown in the picture below when opened in Notepad++.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IownB.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IownB.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>How can we decode this information?</p>
  
  <p>Feedbag file can be downloaded from the link below:
  <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6cirpFZgAoZXzNMR0llenFua00/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6cirpFZgAoZXzNMR0llenFua00/view?usp=sharing</a></p>
  
  <p>------------------ <strong>update1</strong>: on oct 18-----------------------------------------</p>
  
  <p>It is found that the file feedbag is created ( or updated if that file already exists) only when AIM user is sing-in the AIM Instant Messenger. If any contact (buddy) goes offline or online, the file is not updated - this would be one of the great limitation in our code to find the exact online members of each Blast Group.</p>
  
  <p>I sign-in in AIM IM using the account qaninjazz (display name is qaninjazz3). There is a blast group PTGrp and it has four members. Currently, only two members (qaninjazz and presenqa) are online. </p>
  
  <p>(presenqa user was already signed-in in web browser iwantim.com before I sign-in in AIM IM)</p>
  
  <p>I run the code against the neweset feedbag file created but it does not list any members of the PTGrp.
  I have attached the output of this test here:
  <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6cirpFZgAoZdV9PekxwdTJjQkk/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6cirpFZgAoZdV9PekxwdTJjQkk/view?usp=sharing</a></p>
  
  <p>The code should have listed the online members of the PTGrp but it did not. May be, the AIM itself does not put the up-to date data in the file itself.</p>
  
  <p>However, in the output screenshot, we can see that a member of Group for "age" and "NewAIMUsers".</p>
  
  <p>But mr_parker is not online now - this would be a big question because we need only the online members.</p>
  
  <p>"age" is the group that was created in the AIM so it is not blast group.</p>
  
  <p>Based on all these information, I think that we cannot rely on the file feedbag for getting the online members of blast groups.</p>
  
  <p>My basic requirement is to know the participants (online members) of the AIM Blast Group when the user chat on that group.</p>
  
  <p>I am wondering if there is any AOL API or third party API or oscar API to find out the members of blast group in real time.</p>
  
  <p>Please let me know if you want any further information.</p>
  
  <p>Link for the feedbag file that was created on Oct18:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6cirpFZgAoZU254b0hCWTVwTkE/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6cirpFZgAoZU254b0hCWTVwTkE/view?usp=sharing</a></p>
  
  <p>Link for output file:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LsNO4-kisjMGP8LtXdSddQC-DbYbfYo_D0WYsqvtgG8/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LsNO4-kisjMGP8LtXdSddQC-DbYbfYo_D0WYsqvtgG8/edit?usp=sharing</a></p>
  
  <p>------------------<strong>update1</strong>:---------------------------------------------------</p>