Installation

The easiest way to install most Python packages is via easy_install or pip:

$ easy_install skype_chatsync_reader

If you want to use the GUI tool, you will also need to install wxPython 2.8 or later (it is not installed automatically).

A standalone executable version of the GUI tool for Windows can be downloaded here.

Usage

If you want to parse chatsync files programmatically, check out the SkypeChatSyncScanner and SkypeChatSyncParser classes in skype_chatsync_reader.scanner. A typical usage example is:

with open(dat_file, 'rb') as f:
    s = SkypeChatSyncScanner(f)
    s.scan()
    p = SkypeChatSyncParser(s)
    p.parse()

Then use p.timestamp, p.participants, and p.conversation to read out the messages. There convenience function parse_chatsync_profile_dir will scan through all the dat files in the provided chatsync dir and parse all of them (which can be parsed).

If you want to use the GUI tool, simply run the script:

$ skype-chatsync-viewer

which is installed into your python’s scripts directory together with the package.

Issues

This is a very crude implementation, written up in a single evening for fun. It is not meant to be production-quality software. There are numerous known and unknown issues. I do not plan to maintain this actively. Feel free to contribute via Github.

Copyright

• Copyright 2015, Konstantin Tretyakov

• MIT License

• The icon used in the single-file executable is (c) Umut Pulat, licensed under LGPL.