Chapter 10. Advanced Communication Technologies

Sophisticated communication APIs for Series 60 developers

Chapter 9 introduced you to a range of fundamental communications capabilities available to Series 60 C++ developers. This chapter introduces some powerful technologies that build on those basics to provide you with a more sophisticated set of high-level APIs. Although these technologies are built on top of the fundamental functionality covered in the previous chapter, well-encapsulated high-level APIs usually mean that you do not need to understand the underlying technology before reading this chapter. An exception is HTTP on Series 60 1.x, which requires you to make explicit use of the Sockets APIs covered in the previous chapter. Note that in Series 60 2.x, a high-level HTTP API is introduced, which provides a level of abstraction above the raw sockets interface.

Specifically, this chapter covers the following:

• HTTP ” The HyperText Transfer Protocol is used for communicating with machines such as Web servers. Typically it is used by a browser application to retrieve Web pages, but it may also be used to download any kind of file, and also to upload data to the server.

• WAP ” The Wireless Application Protocol defines a set of network layers designed for use by mobile phones and other small, resource-constrained devices. As with HTTP, its typical use is by browsers to download data from a server, but it has a range of other uses which are discussed in this chapter.

• Messaging ” Series 60 contains a powerful "messaging architecture" for sending, receiving and processing messages such as email, SMS and MMS. This chapter shows you how to use the various messaging architecture APIs to send and receive messages from your own application.

• Telephony services ” This section covers the APIs used to access a Series 60 phone's voice call capabilities. It shows you how to make and receive calls, as well as accessing the last calling number.

The following example applications are provided with this chapter:

• HTTPExample ” A simple HTTP application which demonstrates how to perform GET and POST requests using the Series 60 2.x HTTP API.

• MtmsExample ” Demonstrates use of the messaging architecture's Client MTM API to create and send messages of different types.

• SendAsExample ” Shows the messaging Send-As API, a simple, restricted API to perform common messaging tasks .

• SendAppUiExample ” Demonstrates use of the CSendAppUi class to add message-sending capabilities to an application's user interface.

• MsgObserver ” An application which monitors the Inbox and receives notification when a new message is received.

• AnsPhone ” A simple telephony application which shows how to use Series 60 APIs to make and receive calls and to get the last calling number on the phone.

The details for downloading the full buildable source for these examples can be found in the Preface.