Qt Service Framework on Symbian

How to register and unregister service plugins in S60?

Registration phase is a little different compared to other platforms because of the authenticity of the provider is done during (un)registering phase based on the verification of VID/SID (vendor ID or secure ID). A tiny installer application must be implemented by the service provider. Installer application is responsible for the registering (and the unregistering) of the service. The example code for the installer is shown below. The whole installer project can be found under examples/serviceinstaller_sfw_symbian.

    const QString filemanagerxml = "c:\\resource\\apps\\xmldata\\filemanagerservice.xml";
    const QString bluetoothxml = "c:\\resource\\apps\\xmldata\\bluetoothtransferservice.xml";

    int main(int argc, char *argv[])
    {
        QCoreApplication app(argc, argv);

        QServiceManager s;

            if (QFile::exists(filemanagerxml)) {
                    s.addService(filemanagerxml);
            } else {
                    s.removeService("FileManagerService");
            }

            if (QFile::exists(bluetoothxml)) {
                    s.addService(bluetoothxml);
            } else {
                    s.removeService("BluetoothTransferService");
            }
    }

If you want to create your own installer take a copy from the installer project (examples/serviceinstaller_sfw_symbian) and modify only the necessary parts e.g a target for your installer and define plugins which are deployed etc.

If the installer defines the VID (non-zero value) then the VID is stored to the database, otherwise SID is used. When unregistering the plugin the VID/SID verification is done to ensure that only the application which actually registered the service is only allowed to remove it. VID/SID is left to the database even the service has been unregistered. This prevents the exactly same way named services to be installed afterwards because the VID/SID information is locked to the service name.

More info about VID and SID can be found from:

• VendorID
• SecureID