Notifiers API: API description

Global notes and queries are able to be driven from applications or engines without access to any other UI components or UI environments. They hide the RNotifier API and provide helper classes on top of that.

Global notes provide a simple notification UI with optional soft keys, graphic, animation and tones. They display textual information in a given format. The format or rather the note type is defined by TAknGlobalNoteType. The notes are provided by one class, namely CAknGlobalNote.

One interesting aspect of the global notes is that each note is identified by a TInt ID, and the client can refer to a note with the help of such an ID.

Global queries provide a slightly more complex UI. For example, in case CAknGlobalMsgQuery is located beside the text, a header text and image can also be specified. The following global queries exist:

• The confirmation query (CAknGlobalConfirmationQuery).
• The list query (CAknGlobalListQuery).
• The message query (CAknGlobalMsgQuery).
• The list message query (CAknGlobalListMsgQuery).
• The progress dialog (CAknGlobalProgressDialog), which is a global query in a way.

The displaying order of the global notes and queries (in case of components that have no time-out) is LIFO (last in, first out).

The global notes and queries interact correctly with the key lock mechanism, and hide themselves from the display automatically when a call is active. They reappear once a call has been disconnected. All global notes and queries can be canceled (simultaneously in case several notifiers exist) by pressing the End key while a call is not active. Note that task switching (using the Applications key) is not possible when a global note or query is visible.

Global notes and queries support skins. For more information on skins, refer to Skins API Specification[1].

Use cases

The main use cases of Notifiers API are:

1. Showing global notes.
2. Getting global note responses.
3. Canceling global notes.
4. Enhancing global notes.
   • Setting the note text processing.
   • Setting the note soft keys.
   • Setting the note graphic.
   • Setting the note animation.
   • Setting the note tone.
5. Showing global queries.
   • Showing a confirmation query.
   • Showing a list query.
   • Showing a message query.
   • Showing a list message query.
   • Showing and updating a progress dialog.
6. Updating a confirmation or message query.
7. Manipulating the selection in a list or list message query.
8. Canceling global queries.
9. Enhancing global queries.

API class structure

Generally all the classes use the Symbian OS Notifier framework, which is a client-server framework to show notes and queries globally. This functionality is provided by the RNotifier, to which all classes connect.

The figure below shows the UML diagram of a global note which is a part of the Notifiers API.

The figure below and the figures after that show the UML diagrams of the different global queries, including the global progress dialog.

The global list query requires a descriptor array of the list items.

The global list message query requires a descriptor array of the list items.