developerlife - Tutorials

Working with BlackBerry list fields

Nazmul — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:13:51 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to create non-trivial lists using ListField. I will create a sample program that allows you to create, remove, update, delete the contents of a list (that’s backed by a Vector). The list field contains rows of selectable list items. It allows you to display a list of items, and load this list of objects from an array or vector. When using a ListField you have to provide an implementation of the ListFieldCallback interface to perform drawing tasks. This callback constitutes the view and model (using MVC terminology). The controller is the ListField class. Related posts:

Working with BlackBerry screens In this tutorial, I will show you how to quickly...
Working with BlackBerry Layout Managers This tutorial will simply walk you through the various layout...
Using the BlackBerry gauge field to display progress This tutorial will show you how the use the gauge...

Creating a BlackBerry HTTP Connection

Nazmul — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:59:23 +0000

This tutorial will show you the various ways to create an HTTP networking connection from your BlackBerry device to an HTTP server (web service, servlet, etc). The complicated part about doing this on a BlackBerry is deciding which transport you would like to use, and which transport you can use. Related posts:

Using JSON for mobile object exchange I've been working with various object encoding schemes to get...
Creating a BlackBerry custom field This tutorial will show you how to create a very...
Using the BlackBerry gauge field to display progress This tutorial will show you how the use the gauge...

BlackBerry field borders and backgrounds

Nazmul — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:11:15 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to create field (component) backgrounds and borders (decoration). Each field can have a border and a background property. You can use the border to space out fields in your UI, and you can use them to add whitespace. The background allows you to set the background color property of your field and make it fit the look for your app. Related posts:

Creating a BlackBerry custom field This tutorial will show you how to create a very...
Using the BlackBerry gauge field to display progress This tutorial will show you how the use the gauge...
Working with BlackBerry list fields This tutorial will show you how to create non-trivial lists...

Creating a BlackBerry custom field

Nazmul — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:53:53 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to create a very simple custom field (component) using the RIM API. If you're familiar with Swing, then this code will not be a surprise to you. There are some similarities between AWT/Swing and RIM UI API. Related posts:

Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first...
Using the BlackBerry gauge field to display progress This tutorial will show you how the use the gauge...
BlackBerry field borders and backgrounds This tutorial will show you how to create field (component)...

Using the BlackBerry gauge field to display progress

Nazmul — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:42:20 +0000

This tutorial will show you how the use the gauge field to show progress in your apps. This is useful when your app is performing long running tasks that need to report feedback to the user. The gauge field is a horizontal component that can be used to display status or progress. It displays a percentage from 0 to 100 and you can set a label before it to display any progress/status messages. You can even overlay the label inside of the gauge field, so that it won't be displayed before it, but inside of it (on top of the progress bar that’s drawn). Related posts:

Creating a BlackBerry custom field This tutorial will show you how to create a very...
BlackBerry field borders and backgrounds This tutorial will show you how to create field (component)...
Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first...

Asking for BlackBerry application permissions upfront

Nazmul — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:00:01 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to ask a user (of your BlackBerry app) for permissions that are required in order for your app to function properly. There are many APIs in the RIM API that will cause a prompt to be displayed in the BlackBerry UI that will require a user to provide explicit permission to access certain API functionality or access to certain hardware features or data on the device. Instead of interrupting the UI, it’s possible to ask the user for all of these permissions at the very beginning. By the way, if the user does not grant permissions when this popup appears, then an exception will be thrown which you have to deal with. Related posts:

Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first...
Working with BlackBerry screens In this tutorial, I will show you how to quickly...
Creating a BlackBerry custom field This tutorial will show you how to create a very...

Working with BlackBerry screens

Nazmul — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:30:06 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show you how to quickly manage screens using the RIM UI API. The BlackBerry OS maintains a stack of screens, and your app can be pushed and popped from this stack. These are normal screen display operations. You can even hide your screen from the display, and it will show the BlackBerry home screen. You can close the screen as well. Related posts:

Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first...
Working with BlackBerry Layout Managers This tutorial will simply walk you through the various layout...
Using the BlackBerry gauge field to display progress This tutorial will show you how the use the gauge...

Working with BlackBerry Layout Managers

Nazmul — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:27:58 +0000

This tutorial will simply walk you through the various layout managers available to you using RIM’s UI API (not MIDP). RIM’s layout managers are akin to Swing layout managers, and allow you to arrange lots of fields (aka components in Swing), on the screen. You can create your own layout managers, just like in Swing, but this tutorial will show you how to use the built in ones. If none of the layout managers shown here work for you, then you can composite layout managers to get the desired look for your app, before creating your own. Related posts:

Working with BlackBerry screens In this tutorial, I will show you how to quickly...
Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first...
Creating a BlackBerry custom field This tutorial will show you how to create a very...

Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App

Nazmul — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:36:00 +0000

This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first GUI app using RIM’s UI API (not MIDP). Only a skeleton will be created, that you can later expand on to create your own projects. Related posts:

Working with BlackBerry screens In this tutorial, I will show you how to quickly...
Creating a BlackBerry custom field This tutorial will show you how to create a very...
Working with BlackBerry Layout Managers This tutorial will simply walk you through the various layout...

Twitter API integration

Nazmul — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:07:00 +0000

I’ve been building web, mobile, desktop apps that are powered by the ScreamingToaster ONE Platform for the last 3 years. I’ve had to integrate with a lot of services, like weather, credit card payment processing gateways, GeoIP lookups, CellID lookups, etc. One of the easiest integrations I’ve had to perform is with Twitter :) . Twitter has a simple to use API that can be accessed using Java or just about any other language. There are some really good Java wrappers for this API, and I’m going to highlight a really good one in this tutorial. I’m also going to show you how to integrate with Twitpic using Java. Related posts:

Connecting to the LinkPoint staging server for payments integration I’ve build payments and licensing infrastructure for my ScreamingToaster ONE...

Connecting to the LinkPoint staging server for payments integration

Nazmul — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:39:00 +0000

I’ve build payments and licensing infrastructure for my ScreamingToaster ONE Platform, that allows mobile, web, and desktop software to share the same payments and licensing services. For payments, I integrated with FirstData Global Gateway, using the LinkPoint API. The LinkPoint API is good and FirstData provides lots of documentation that shows you how to get started. However, there is one huge flaw in their API and support docs – they don’t show you how to connect to the LinkPoint TEST gateway. All the code and examples are geared to connect to the PRODUCTION/LIVE gateway. If you’re like me, you want to test your stuff before hooking up to the LIVE gateway :) . So this tutorial is dedicated to simply connecting to their TEST gateway, so that you can test your code before going live. Related posts:

Twitter API integration I’ve been building web, mobile, desktop apps that are powered...

Using JSON for mobile object exchange

Nazmul — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:47:02 +0000

I've been working with various object encoding schemes to get information transferred over the network between services and mobile apps running on Android and BlackBerry. On Android, I figured I would try using Java object serialization, and that works some of the time, and not for anything complex. I wish the object serialization and deserialization mechanism in GWT would be ported over to all these mobile environments, but I digress. This tutorial outlines the use of JSON for this purpose. Related posts:

Creating a BlackBerry HTTP Connection This tutorial will show you the various ways to create...
Working with BlackBerry screens In this tutorial, I will show you how to quickly...

Getting code signing keys from RIM, then using them

Nazmul — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:41:12 +0000

If you use certain BlackBerry APIs, you have to get code signing keys and sign your .COD file with them, before you will be able to install and run these applications on a BlackBerry device. This tutorial will walk you through the process of getting the keys, and installing them to your JDE, and then deploying your application to a real device OTA (over the air). No related posts.

BlackBerry Development Tools – JDE (and IDEA)

Nazmul — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:29:46 +0000

There are different tools that you can use for BlackBerry development - Eclipse Plugin and JDE. In this tutorial I will show you how to use the JDE in conjunction with IDEA as the primary IDE for BlackBerry development. Directions are provided on how to install and configure the JDE, then get started with a Hello World project, then deploy the project to the simulator and run it. The JDE is an IDE that BlackBerry created, and it's really really old. Modern IDEs like IDEA, Eclipse, and NetBeans really put it shame. It's good to see that BlackBerry is working on an Eclipse based IDE, and hopefully the JDE will be retired soon. I couldn't stand to use the JDE by itself, which is why I do all my editing, compiling, refactoring in IDEA, and just use JDE to build my COD file and run it in the simulator, and occasionally use the debugger in the JDE. It's really old looking and clunky, and just a pain to work with, when compared to IDEA. You can use Eclipse or NetBeans instead of IDEA if that's your preference. No related posts.

BlackBerry Development Tools – Eclipse Plugin (in beta)

Nazmul — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:00:03 +0000

There are different tools that you can use for BB development - Eclipse Plugin and JDE. In this tutorial I will show you how to use the Eclipse Plugin as your IDE for BlackBerry development. Directions are provided on how to install and configure the Eclipse Plugin, then get started with a Hello World project, then deploy the project to the simulator and run it. Related posts:

Creating your first GUI BlackBerry App This tutorial will simply walk you through creating your first...