LiMo Foundation Blog

The easiest way to create a widget is with the LiMo BONDI SDK, available currently for the Windows and Linux platforms, with MacOSX support in the new year.

First install the SDK and then create a New BONDI Widget project.

The SDK can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially if you are not familiar with the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). There is documentation contained within the SDK, as well as documentation on the LiMo BONDI SDK Website.

Let's assume you know about Web technologies like HTML, CSS & Javascript and crack on. I suppose you're also keen to try out some of the exciting native functionality that BONDI APIs provide.  However, since the SDK only supports filesystem and appconfig emulation in the "Phone view" currently, we are going to only use appconfig, which you can think of as the precursor to the Storage interface.

Building Award Winning Widgets

Lets write an award winning widget! A simple widget to store generated passwords for Websites, telephone banking and secret pagan meetings of the occult.

We essentially need two bits of functionality:

1. Generate the random password - easy with some Javascript
2. We need to be able to save the passwords we make and load them - easy with BONDI appconfig

Luckily I've done the Googling (the hard work) for you:

• view-source:http://static.webvm.net/LiMo-tutorial/main.js
• view-source:http://static.webvm.net/LiMo-tutorial/index.html

So please copy&paste the above files in your new project's respective files.  Next, we need to sort out the configuration document, by clicking the config.xml.

Since we use the appconfig feature, we need to declare that in the API dependencies view. Just check the top appconfig feature, save and try out your widget by double clicking index.html and now you should see in the Phone view:

Here you can generate a random password, and you should be able to copy the password in the above text area and save it. Imagine if you are starting the widget, you could automatically load a previously appconfig stored password list like:

banking, 6432hfeu
home, nfs1313G
yahoo, j34h2r0d

There you have it! A BONDI Widget! In order to turn it into a winner, I recommend you style it and add some artwork. Remember widgets are just simple packages of Web content. Since you're not necessarily connected to the Internet, you need things like BONDI appconfig APIs to maintain state.

The LiMo SDK is the best way for you to develop and test a BONDI widget!