BlackBerry Invoke API
One of the cool things I read about in the October version of the BlackBerry developer newsletter was the Invoke API. First introduced in version 4.0 of the JDE, the Invoke API gives developers the ability to launch native BlackBerry applications like the addressbook, the calendar, email and on the 8100, the camera and map applications. A long time ago I wrote a J2ME application that enabled you to view recipes from my wife's recipe site on your J2ME enabled phone and one of the most obvious features the application was missing was the ability to send a recipe via email to someone else. Using the Invoke API on the BlackBerry would make it easy to do so; you'd end up with something like this:
Invoke.invokeApplication(Invoke.APP_ TYPE_MESSAGE, new MessageArguments(MessageArguments.ARG_NEW, “webmaster@blackberryblog.com”, “Cool Recipe on KarensRecipes.com”, recipeBody));
I haven't dug that deeply into the Invoke API, but from the name it sounds like you can't embed (I'm guessing for security reasons), but it sure would be nice to be able to send an email directly from your custom BlackBerry application rather than having to bring up the compose message dialog box... Same thing for the camera: is it possible to open the camera, take a picture and get the resulting picture in your application? Inquiring minds want to know.
October 18, 2006 in Code by ajohnson