Adding context sensitive help to your application menu

Attaching an application

To attach a help application to a AIW framework:

1. Use the Help AIW Provider to construct your application. See the code snippet below for an example of how to do this.

   • Create the required resource file declarations. For more information, see Managing resource files.

   • Attach the application to the AIW framework.

   • The service handler instance is then initialized. After this, a help menu is attached to the service handler instance with the AttachMenuL method, using the interest (R_AIWCONSUMERBASICS_MENUINTEREST in the code snippet) and the menu pane (R_AIWCONSUMERBASICS_MENU in the code snippet) as parameters, both of which are defined in a resource file.

     Note: When the Service Handler instance exists, the consumer application's interest must be attached to it before AIW service commands can be executed. Attaching usually needs to be done only once, and a good place for it is the consumer application's ConstructL() method.

   In the below code snippet, the UI controller is first initialized and the view object is created. For more information about UI controllers, see UI controller.

   void CAIWConsumerBasicsAppUi::ConstructL()
       {
       // Initialise app UI with standard value.
       BaseConstructL();
       
       // Create view object
       iAppView = CAIWConsumerBasicsAppView::NewL( ClientRect(), *this );
       AddToStackL( iAppView );    
   
       // Create service handler instance.    
       iServiceHandler = CAiwServiceHandler::NewL();
   
       // Attach call UI menu service interest to AIW framework.
       iServiceHandler->AttachMenuL(R_AIWCONSUMERBASICS_MENU, 
           R_AIWCONSUMERBASICS_MENUINTEREST) ;
       }

   Note: Where you attach your help application depends on the UI architecture solution you are using:

   • Traditional

   • S60 UI

2. Make sure ServiceHandler.lib is accessible to your linker when compiling your application by including it in your mmp file or by editing the project properties in your IDE, depending on your build environment.

3. Initialize the menu and handle the commands. For more information, see Commands. If the "Help" command is selected, a parameter list is built (see below code snippet) to pass common types of parameters (the UID and the context name of the help in this case) to the AIW provider.

   void CAIWConsumerBasicsAppUi::HandleCommandL( TInt aCommand )
       {
       switch( aCommand )
           {
           case EEikCmdExit:
           case EAknSoftkeyExit:
               Exit();
               break;
           default:
               {
               // Check first that we really want to execute KAiwCmdHelp. By this 
               // way we can set up the generic param list only if necessary.
               TInt aiwCmd = iServiceHandler->ServiceCmdByMenuCmd( aCommand );
               if ( aiwCmd == KAiwCmdHelp )
                   {
                   // First set up help context parameters.
                   CAiwGenericParamList& inParamList = SetupGenericParamListL();
               
                   // Execute AIW service command.
                   iServiceHandler->ExecuteMenuCmdL(
                       aCommand,
                       inParamList,
                       iServiceHandler->OutParamListL());             
                   }
               break;
               }
           }
       }

Figure: Menu option origins

The above figure shows the origin of each menu option function, when the application is constructed using the above code snippets. You can find the original AIWConsumerBasics example application in the SDK at < SDK installation directory>\S60Ex\AIWConsumerBasics.

Additional information on attaching your help application to a AIW framework

• How to link your Client Application with the Help topics

• How to make your application express Interest in Help AIW Provider

• How to attach and initialize the Help AIW Provider

• How to handle Menu Commands

Related S60 APIs

The S60 platform provides the following AIW APIs:

• AIW Service Handler API

  The AIW Service Handler API offers access to the Service Handler, which manages the relationship between consumers of AIW services and providers of AIW services.

• AIW Criteria API

  The AIW Criteria API allows you to pass information about the desired services to the AIW framework, including where and how the services should be bound to your application.

• AIW Generic Parameter API

  The AIW Generic Parameter API allows you to transfer data to providers of AIW services and to receive data from those providers. The generic parameters are used for transferring data between AIW consumers and providers and are a pair of semantic id and variant values.