Blackberry simulator and Internet access

Posted on August 10, 2009. Filed under: blackberry, MDS, software development | Tags: blackberry, eclipse, MDS, software development |

“communication is 9 parts listening and 1 part speaking”

I ran across another gotcha today when I was trying to get my application to make a web service call.  I could not communicate with the internet.  Either I’m getting better at this or I got lucky, but figuring out the solution only took about an hour this time.  The help files that I ran across were actually helpful this time.

The easiest way to test if your blackberry simulator has internet access is to use the ‘Browser’ from inside the simulator.  If you can open a web page then your applications will have network access.

The key to this whole thing is MDS (Mobile Data System?) and activating it automatically when you start the blackberry simulator.  Once I followed these steps (as taken from Eclipse Help system) everything worked just fine!

 

Start the BlackBerry MDS Simulator when you start the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator

1. On the Run menu, click Debug Configurations or Run Configurations.
2. Perform one of the following tasks:
   • To work with an existing start configuration, under BlackBerry Simulator, select a start configuration.
   • To work with a new start configuration, right-click BlackBerry Simulator, select New.
3. Click the Simulator tab.
4. Click the General tab.
5. Select the Launch Mobile Data System Connection Service (MDS-CS) with simulator option.
6. Click OK.

The keywords that I used to find this …

• Test a BlackBerry Application that uses an HTTP connection.