Agent appplication with should run in background

[alonish]

Hi all,
I'm writing an agent application, which supposed to run in the background.
1. I've added a "hide" button to the main form. It's duty is to move the application to run in the background. How can I do it?
2. How can I define a special key combination so that if the application will run in the background, it will listen and then load. What kind of listener should it define?

Thanks to all the helpers,
Alon

[mshita]

Are you talking about J2ME???

MIDlet can not run in the background. However, wait until MIDP3.0 comes out and this will be possible!!

Mounir

[petrib]

However, if you don't want to wait a year (or however long it takes) for MIDP 3.0 to be complete, and then another year for the first phones with it, you need to find other solutions to your problem.

If Symbian based phones are OK for you, you can do what you want if you write your app in C++, instead.

[mshita]

I don't know what your agent app will be doing so this might not be usefull. But another way around your problem could be using the PushRegistry in MIDP2.0. You won't be able to start the app with a key stroke combo, but you could be using a time or have a remote server send a SMS to launch the app.

[alonish]

Thanks for your replies,
I was really sure that this is possible.
I've installed a freeware on my 6600 called: "ScreenTaker". This application has a "hide" button, which moves it to the background. when the user press a specific key combination (such as menu+another key), the application goes back to foreground, and saves the current screen.
I want to write a similar application, which means -running in the background (the application would contact a server once an hour), and when the application has a messsage for the user it will come back to foreground.
Waiting for your replies,
Thanks and best regards,
Alon

[Santos]

With that particular phone (and I believe some more Nokia 60's), when you press the red (hang up) button, the application will be send to the background. I haven't looked into that much, but I assume it will be in paused state and I'm pretty sure you can't handle any key presses in background.
But what you want to do you could do via the push registry, with an alarm you could start your app that will go online and do whatever, and register a new alarm to do the same an hour later.

[alonish]

A background application can listen to key presses, as I wrote in my previous post. There are softwares which do that, such as: screen taker: http://www.symbianware.com/product.php?id=screentaker60

If somebody has an idea how to perform what i've described in my previous post, please reply.

Thanks,
Alon

[Santos]

^Yes, but j2me apps can't.

[suzier]

With Sony Ericsson and Nokia S60 phones, you can put the midlet in Background by setting : Display.setCurrent(null).

On Sony Ericsson, when a midlet is in background (not visible), you can not use the another midlet and the Photo application.

In background mode, you can start HTTP connection or file scanning (JSR-75). But I don't know if you can catch key pressed.