[Cover] [Previous Section] [Next Section] [Index]

Current chapter: Notification Utilities
Section 24 out of 79 total sections , Section 6 out of 7 sections in this chapter


Sending notifications with SendNtfn

The SendNtfn.exe utility (sdk_installdir/SendNtfn.exe) is a Windows utility that allows you to send and manage notifications. Specifically, it allows you to:

The SendNtfn.exe utility is designed primarily for prototyping and testing applications that send notifications. For production applications, it is recommended that you use the COM interface or the C++ Notification API, which are described in the UP.SDK Developer's Guide.

To use the SendNtfn.exe utility to send secure notifications, you must first obtain and install a certificate as described in Requesting certificates with CertMaker.

When you start SendNtfn.exe, it display the window shown in Figure 2-2.

FIGURE  2-2.     SendNtfn.exe utility

The following table describes the fields in the SendNtfn window.

Field  Description 

Host 

Specify the name of the host on which the UP.Link Messenger is running. The Messenger is the UP.Link server component that handles notifications. 

URL 

Specify the notification URL. For prefetch notifications, this is the URL of the digest that will be preloaded into the phone's cache; for alerts, this is the URL that will be fetched when the user requests the alert from the phone's status card.  

The URL must be hosted on the domain for which the certificate was issued. For more information, see Requesting certificates with CertMaker

Subscriber ID 

The ID of the subscriber to whom the notification is addressed.  

Time-to-live 

Set the expiration period of the notification to the given number of seconds. If the UP.Link server cannot deliver the notification within this period of time, the notification will expire. If you set this field to 0, the expiration period defaults to the maximum allowed by the UP.Link server--which is 60 days by default. 

This field is only applicable when adding a notification. 

Alert Title 

Specify the alert title string. This field is required when adding an alert; it is ignored otherwise.  

Alert Type 

A string specifying the type of signal to issue to the subscriber. It consists of four characters, representing the device-dependent signal, sound, visual signal, and vibration signal, respectively. You can specify several values for each type of signal: 

Device-dependent signal: -, D  

Sound: -, 1, 2, 3, 4  

Visual signal: -, 1, 2, 3, 4  

Vibration: -, 1  

The dash (-) turns the signal off; D is the default signal; the numbers specify progressively higher levels of urgency. For example: -23- specifies sound 2 and visual signal 3. 

The recommended alert_type string is: 

"D---"  

Certificate File 

Specify a full path to the file containing the certificate and key. 

Password 

Specify the password to use when decrypting the certificate file. This is the password you provided when you ran the CertMaker utility. 

Require Certificate 

Specifies whether to require that the secure (HTTPS-based) upnotifyps protocol be used for communication with the UP.Link server.  

If the check box is ON, it disables failover to upnotifyp when the specified UP.Link server does not support the upnotifyps protocol. 

If the check box is OFF, the non-secure (HTTP-based) upnotifyp protocol is used instead of the HTTPS-based upnotifyps protocol. If you want to send non-secure notifications and you don't have a certificate, make sure this check box is off. 

Alert Title Charset 

Select the character set to use for the alert title string (the default value is US-ASCII). 


[Cover] [Previous Section] [Next Section] [Index]

Current chapter: Notification Utilities
Section 24 out of 79 total sections , Section 6 out of 7 sections in this chapter


Copyright © 1999, Unwired Planet, Inc. All rights reserved.