FeatMngrExample: dynamic feature management example

Download

Click on the following link to download the example: FeatMngrExample.zip

Click: browse to view the example code.

Purpose

The example shows how to use the Feature Manager API. UI vendors and device manufacturers can use this API to declare features (such as DRM agents, codecs, vibra) as available or not. The feature set can be adjusted dynamically as software services are installed and uninstalled or as platform capabilities are discovered dynamically.

This example shows how Feature Manager APIs allow applications and system software to establish which features are present on or absent from a Symbian device.

Design and implementation

The example consists of two processes:

• featmngrexample.exe: this is the main process which provides the list of available features. It also provides the option to add new features or delete/update a feature.

• featurechecker.exe: this process receives notification about new features installed or uninstalled by the main process.

FeatMngrExample

This shows the use of the RFeatureControl API to manage features.

It presents menu options to the user to list the available features, to add or delete a feature, update an existing feature, and to enable or disable a feature. It also starts another process, called featurechecker.exe which receives notifications of events happening in this process. The list of features includes some whose feature flags are non-modifiable. Any attempt to modify or delete those features will result in a system error -21 (KErrAccessDenied). When adding a new feature, it should be in the range as described in the console because the featurechecker process subscribes to this range of features for change notification.

FeatureChecker

This process is started by featmngrexample.exe. It implements the MFeatureObserver class to handle notification of feature changes. FeatureChecker also demonstrates the use of the CFeatureNotifier class. It implements HandleNotifyChange() to handle the changes made by FeatMngrExample. The type of change is displayed to the user as an infoprint message (User::InfoPrint()). HandleNotifyChange() is called to handle changes for those features which are subscribed to for notification (in the NotifyFeatureL () method).

Building and configuring

To build the example:

• The example builds two executables called featmngrexample.exe and featurechecker.exe in the standard locations. The second executable is run by the first.

• You can build the example from your IDE or the command line.

  If you use an IDE, import the bld.inf file of the example into your IDE, and use the build command of the IDE.

  If you use the command line, open a command prompt, and set the current directory to the source code directory of the example. You can then build the example with the SBSv1 build tools with the following commands:

  bldmake bldfiles

  abld build

Running the example

When running the example, the user is presented with various menu options that are self-explanatory. Press any other key to exit.

See also:

Feature Management