Book Image

BlackBerry Java Application Development

Book Image

BlackBerry Java Application Development

Overview of this book

BlackBerry Smartphone was once the domain of jet-setting business users with power suits. Now you can hardly go anywhere without seeing someone using a BlackBerry to check their messages or make a call. It's this kind of explosive growth that makes the BlackBerry ecosystem a great place to develop and market applications through the BlackBerry App World store—this book shows you how to do just that! This step-by-step guide gives you a hands-on experience of developing innovative Java applications for your BlackBerry. With the help of this book, you will learn to build your own applications to illustrate the platform, and the various capabilities that developers can use in their programs. It explores the powers of Blackberry and helps you develop professional and impressive Java applications. The book teaches how to write rich, interactive, and smart BlackBerry applications in Java. It expects the readers to know Java but not Java Mobile or the BlackBerry APIs. We will learn to build rich, interactive, and smart Java applications for the BlackBerry. The book will cover UI programming, data storage, programming network, and internet API apps. As we move on, we will learn more about the BlackBerry's device features, such as messaging, GPS, multimedia, contacts and calendar, and so on.This book also helps you build your own applications to illustrate the platform, and the various capabilities that developers can use in their programs.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
BlackBerry Java Application Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
Preface

Start at the beginning


Every application must have a starting point, and for BlackBerry applications it is at a method named main. The use of the name main goes all the way back to the C programming language, if not further. At that time, simply making a method named main was enough to be able to run an application. However, because Java is an object-oriented language, you can't just make a method named main. In Java, all methods must be in a class, and this includes the method main as well.

In addition to the main method all BlackBerry applications must contain an object derived from Application as well. As both the Application-derived class and the main method are required, it is standard practice to include the main method in the same class as your Application.

Application and UiApplication

As we just said, every BlackBerry application must contain a class derived from Application. The Application class contains the bare essentials for interacting with the BlackBerry operating system. If...