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

Laying the ground work


Still, this is all rather abstract because you haven't seen any real code samples yet, so let's get into some code! For this chapter, you will build an application that someone will use to request some time off from their manager. This is definitely one of those applications that just can't be done without interfacing with other applications on the handheld! To make getting started a little easier we will take the starter TimeOff application from the code bundle and add to it throughout this chapter.

The first task to undertake is one to help make testing and debugging easier. Remember, you will be working on the simulator, which is essentially a brand new device and which can be often reset. That means you don't have any of your contacts there! You will need some contacts later, so to get started let's add a menu item to the application that will create a few contacts that you can later use to test with.