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Qt Mobility Project APIs Overview

Qt Mobility Project delivers a set of new APIs to Qt with features that are well known from the mobile device world, in particular phones. However, these APIs allow the developer to use these features with ease from one framework and apply them to phones, netbooks and non-mobile personal computers. The framework not only improves many aspects of a mobile experience, because it improves the use of these technologies, but has applicability beyond the mobile device arena.

Overview

Introducing the New Qt APIs

Qt Mobility covers a wide range of features and technologies so it best to regard it not as a single API but as a collection of APIs or frameworks.

This release contains the following APIs:

Bearer ManagementAn API to control the system's connectivity state.
ContactsAn API enabling clients to request contact data from local or remote backends.
LocationThe Location API provides a library for distributing and receiving location data using arbitrary data sources.
MessagingThe Messaging API enables access to messaging services.
MultimediaProvides a set of APIs to play and record media, and manage a collection of media content.
Publish and SubscribeThe Publish and Subscribe API, containing Value Space, enables applications to read item values, navigate through and subscribe to change notifications.
Qt Service FrameworkA set of Qt APIs to that allows clients to discover and instantiate arbitrary services.
Sensors APIThe Sensors API provides access to sensors.
System InformationA set of APIs to discover system related information and capabilities.
Versit APIAn API to manage Versit documents.

These APIs give the developer a range of desirable functions for a mobile platform, but now these functions become possible on platforms not traditionally associated with some of the features. A mobile device using the Qt Mobility Project API would be able to

The New Qt APIs deliver to developers an enabling package. It will be used by developers to build a variety of applications and services that are mobile capable or familiar to mobile users, irrespective of whether the platform is mobile or not. This means that there is the possibility of easy transfer of user experience from PC to phone or vice versa.

Namespace

The QtMobility APIs are placed into the QtMobility namespace, with the important exception of Multimedia. This is done to facilitate the future migration of Mobility APIs into Qt.

See the Quickstart guide for an example on how the namespace impacts on application development.

Getting Started

To get started with Qt Mobility see the

For users on the supported Symbian platforms, shown at the bottom of this page, see the instructions at the Qt For Symbian Developer's Library

Known Issues

For a list of known issues and an additional details on feature supported see Release Notes of the QtMobility Project 1.0.2 patch release.

For a overview of Platform Compatibility see Platform Compatibility.

The New Qt APIs

Bearer Management

Although not a network manager, this component manages the connectivity state of the device to the network. So it does not manage network configurations, which are the role of the platform provider, but it does allow the user to start or stop network interfaces. Some higher level management of the connection session may also be possible as well depending on the platform.

Some platforms can have a set of grouped access points perhaps based on a common purpose. Bearer Management allows comparison and prioritization of the access and use of these points.

The aim of Bearer Management is to reduce the need for the developer to be concerned about trying to locate the best connection from a list of possible IP bearers and 3G connections. The user can select the best or it can be selected transparently so that WLAN roaming can occur seemlessly.

Some examples of the Bearer Management functionality,

For more details, see the Bearer Management API overview.

Contacts

The structure and retrieval of contact data from local or remote backends. It includes the ability to create, edit, list, delete and lookup contact information whether it is stored locally or remotely.

For more details, see the Contacts API overview.

Publish and Subscribe

Will enable context sensitive access to information in future releases. Data is organized as a tree, with data being able to 'shadow' other data with the 'same key', a string specifying the leaf or node. The context is an example of a context ontology, a defined set of relationships. As the context changes the values of the objects change but the relationships remain the same. It is intended to be an enabling technology, the basis of a range future applications.

At this stage the API is intended to act as a common communications method between applications, whether local or remote.

For more details, see the Publish and Subscribe API overview.

Location

The C++ API is one layer of this feature. This API provides an easy to use interface that encapsulates basic geographical information obtained from satellite or other sources about the user, including latitude and longitude, bearing, speed and altitude. It will enable a range of geographical applications, for example, maps.

For more details, see the Location API overview.

Messaging

A common interface for handling SMS, MMS, MIME Email and TNEF Email messages. Enables access to messaging services to search and sort messages, notify of changes to messages stored, send messages with or without attachments, retrieve message data, and launch the preferred messaging client to either display an existing message, or compose a message.

For more details see the Messaging API overview.

Multimedia

An API to play audio and video of various formats. Record audio. The playing and managing of an FM radio. This includes the typical functionality you would find on a music and video player, combined with an FM radio.

For more details see the Multimedia API overview.

Sensors

An API for accessing hardware sensors. This covers both high-level sensors such as screen orientation (portrait, landscape) and low-level, real-time sensors such as accelerometer data.

For more details see the Sensors API overview.

Service Framework

A platform independent method of finding Services. A 'service' is an independent component that allows a client to perform a well-defined operation.

The services are implemented as plugins installed on the device and can look for supporting external services running on a central server. E.g. weather, local tourist attractions etc. Default applications can use the layer to locate servers.

Since this is an abstraction layer then the app does not need to be concerned with the underlying protocol, where the servers are, the hardware peculiarities with networking and other low level details.

For more details see the Service Framework API overview.

System Information

An API to discover system related information and capabilities. Information available will cover software version numbers, hardware features, network connection types and status, display, data storage devices, device information and the screensaver.

For more details see the System Information API overview.

Versit

An API to manage Versit ® documents, such as vCards.

For more details see the Versit API overview.

The QtMobility Namespace

The QtMobility APIs are placed into the QtMobility namespace. This is done to facilitate the future migration of Mobility APIs into Qt. See the Quickstart guide for an example on how the namespace impacts on application development.

Platform Compatibility

Color Explanation
A functional backend for the API on the platform is complete.
A functional backend for the API on the platform is being worked however it is not functionally complete.
A functional backend for the API on the platform is being worked on. At this point it is far from functionally complete or there is no platform specific code inside QDF source code.
A functional backend for the API on the platform is not being worked on. It is possible for others to implement and integrate support.

Tier 1 Platforms
Primary platforms are the main focus of Mobility API. There platforms are frequently tested by our unit test suite and other internal testing tools. However, the timeline of availability for each backend is subject to change.
Tier 2 Platforms
Secondary platforms include future direction of Qt Mobility API. Contributions to these platforms are welcome.

  API Maturity Level Tier 1 Platforms Tier 2 Platforms
S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 S60 5th Edition Symbian^3 Maemo 5 Windows CE/Mobile Windows XP/Vista Linux Mac OS X
Service Framework (in-process) FINAL
Messaging FINAL
Bearer Management FINAL
Publish and Subscribe FINAL
Contacts FINAL
Location FINAL
Multimedia FINAL
System Information FINAL
Sensors FINAL
Versit FINAL

Feedback and bug reports

Email any inquiries and feedback about Qt Mobility to qt-mobility-feedback@trolltech.com

And please report any bugs you may find to http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com

Acknowledgements

The icheck tool uses the following third-party component:

Open Source front-end for C++ (MIT license), Roberto Raggi <roberto.raggi@gmail.com>, QTMOBILITY/tools/icheck/parser/src


Copyright © 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies) Trademarks
Qt Mobility Project 1.0.2