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Bluetooth Notifiers Support Overview

The Bluetooth Notifiers Support component enables you to create dialogs to interact with device users about Bluetooth interactions.

Purpose

The Bluetooth Notifiers component enables you to create dialogs for interacting with device users about Bluetooth interactions. You can offer Bluetooth dialogs for several purposes, but the main purpose is to provide security for Bluetooth interactions.

Required background

You need to be familiar with the core Bluetooth concepts.

Key concepts and terms

Pairing: Pairing takes place when two devices establish a trusted relationship with each other for secure communication.
Passkey: A passkey is a piece of data known only to the two parties involved in the communication. It is also known as a shared secret. In the Symbian Bluetooth context, a Passkey Display notifier is a dialog that uses a 6-digit number, which is generated by Symbian platform and then manually entered on a peer device.
Secure Simple Pairing (SSP): Secure Simple Pairing is pairing that takes place with an automatically generated PIN. The user does not create a PIN.

Architecture

APIs

The key classes of Symbian's implementation of Bluetooth Notifiers are as follows:

API	Description
CPinCodeEntryNotifier	The class to provide a PIN-code entry notifier.
CNumericComparisonNotifier	The class to provide a numeric comparison notifier.
CPasskeyNotifier	The class to provide a passkey display notifier.
CPasskeyDisplayNotifier	The class to provide a passkey display notifier. The passkey entry display notifier can currently receive two types of updates: Updates to the remote device name (the same as the other notifiers). Updates to provide the notification of a key press by the remote keyboard. As a Symbian platform device will be the display part of the pairing method, the remote device will be keyboard only and so not feature a display. It is highly recommended that the key press notifications provide a visual representation of keys being registered to help the device user.

Text notifiers library details

The Bluetooth Notifiers component has one published library. The DLL that provides the functionality and the library to which your code must link is identified below.

DLL	LIB	Short description
textnotifiers.dll	textnotifiers.lib	Basic types used to allow interactions with standard Bluetooth notifiers.

Typical uses

The key purpose of Bluetooth Notifiers is to create dialogs to enable secure pairing. The Bluetooth Notifier provides the following types of authentication dialog to enable secure pairing:

Authorisation dialog

Authorisation dialogs offer device users the choice to accept or reject connections.
PIN-code entry notifier

A user creates a PIN and sends it to the peer.
Numeric comparison notifier

Numeric Comparison involves the user comparing 6-digit numbers displayed on both devices that are authenticating. Authentication is completed by the users of both devices signalling a confirmation that the displayed numbers are identical – if one device is unable to input a confirmation then only the other device needs to signal confirmation
Passkey display notifier

Authentication by Passkey Entry involves the Symbian platform device displaying a 6-digit number which is manually entered on a device without a display (but with a numeric keypad). This is similar to PIN Code Entry except in this case the number is chosen for the user, and it need only be entered on the peer device.

In addition to the authentication notifiers, it is possible to use Bluetooth Notifiers for device selection dialogs. Device selection dialogs are for use by applications and profiles to decide which device the user wishes to connect to. Device selection dialogs do not need to be Bluetooth notifiers. Whereas the authentication notifiers are not associated with an application, device selection notifiers are. Therefore it is best to get the relevant application, for example a camera, to create the dialog.

Parent topic: Bluetooth Notifiers Support