Download MIDlet to a phone

Question

Hi all,
I developed my J2ME application that will connect to a remote server using GPRS on the J2ME Wireless Toolkit.
Can someone please give me some tips on how download the MIDlet onto a phone. Do I need to download both .JAD & .JAR files?
How do I create the .JAR file using the toolkit?
Its an MIDP1.0 application, which type of phone do people recommend I use?
Any tips would be much appriciated!
Thanks
Glenman

Answer 1

To make a jar file with the wireless tool kit
Click on project and then click on package/create package. never forget that size is crucial so you should use an obfuscutator with it. If your jar file is above 64 KB , then use an obfuscator (retroguard, proguard, etc.).
Normaly both Yourapplication.jar and Yourapplication.jad will be stored into
the_path_to_wireless_tookit/apps/your_project/bin/
You need both jar and jad file to be OTA compatible.
the JAD file contains several meta-data (including an URL pointing to the JAR file: MIDLET-URL or something)
To install your application on a mobile phone you need two things:
- A java/wap enabled mobile phone
- and a configured web server.
for the web server your need to add two new MIME types:
for JAD and JAR.
You should find this information over the web, I don't have it here.
Once you have proplerly configured your web server (if you didn't the jad file will be downloaded like a text file and nothing will happen). Simply use your wap browser and type the URL of the JAD file:
http://www.myserver.com/applications/MyApplication.jad
Your mobile phone should download and install your application.
It always better to test first your application with the constructor SDK. There are some problems that could occur during the "make package" process. (mainly related to the JAR properpties, NOKIA for example is more touchy about this than sonyericsson phones). Don't expect a lot of feeback from your mobile phone,for any errors you will receive "INVALID file". SDK will give you more valuable logs.
Hope this help
Olivier