PrnESock

PrnESock allows an application to use TCP/IP network under the Series 60 SDK emulator on PC.

Introduction

The Symbian Series 60 SDK emulator provides a full target environment, which runs under Windows on a PC. Typically, Symbian developers are interested in working with Web, WAP, email, and fax services however, there are issues regarding debugging such applications. According to Symbian the emulator's networking facilities are not designed to work with PC-based LAN networking.

The standard solution proposed by Symbian is comprised of 1) using a PC with 2 physical COM-ports, 2) setting up Windows RAS on one of the ports, 3) configuring the Emulator connections so that it will use another COM port and 4) connecting the ports with a null-modem cable.

Limitations encountered in the above solution include:

  Most desktop PCs come with only one serial port;
  A special null-modem cable is required;
  Since the COM-ports are occupied, they become unusable for any other purpose;
  Configuring Windows RAS service may not be simple; and
  The connection over RAS will take about half a minute to be established

Realizing the above issues, Symbian Ltd. provides a plug-in for connecting UIQ (Symbian OS v7.0) emulator to the internet, however there is no such solution available for Symbian OS v6.1.

PrnESock is an extremely useful software plug-in solution overcoming inherent limitations associated with connecting Symbian OS v6.1 to the internet.

Installation

PrnESock installation is simple:

unpack PrnESock.DLL and PrnESock.LIB files into your emulator binaries directory (typically %EPOCROOT%Epoc32\Release\wins\UDEB, e.g. C:\Symbian\6.1\Series60\Epoc32\Release\wins\UDEB).

That's all.

How to use

Simply change your MMP file to use PrnESock.LIB instead of ESOCK.LIB.

If you want to keep the same MMP file usable for emulator and target platform build, then remove "LIBRARY esock.lib" and add instead:

Now use the regular Symbian build process (makmake, bldfiles, or any other way you use to create your build environment from MMP file).

That's all.

Technical Principles

Networking architecture of Symbian OS is comprised of several layers between the application and network bearer. PrnESock doesn't deal with all those layers.

In fact PrnESock has re-implemented RSocket and RHostResolver classes, while all other exported function are just stubs, immediately jumping to the correspondent functions of the original ESOCK.DLL.

Thus the applications, which are supposed to work with the ESOCK.DLL, will continue to do so. The applications build with PrnESock.LIB will work with PrnESock's implementation of those 2 classes only, while all other functions will behave exactly as they are from the original ESOCK.DLL (in fact PrnESock.DLL loads the original ESOCK.DLL and delegates those functions to their original implementation).

Public Domain Version Limitations

The public domain version of PrnESock has the following limitations:

  Don't rely on inheritance of RSocket and RHostResolver classes from other Symbian classes (namely RSubSessionBase). This means that methods of the base class (e.g. CloseSubSession()) called on instances of RSocket and RHostResolver will produce unpredictable results. This is because the internal data of the classes completely differs from the original implementation.

  RSocket does not support the following methods:

An attempt to use them will panic the application with code KErrNotSupported.

  RHostResolver does not support the following methods:

An attempt to use them will panic the application with code KErrNotSupported.

  RSocket supports only: a) KAfInet address family b) KSockStream and KSockDatagram socket types c) KProtocolInetIcmp, KProtocolInetTcp and KProtocolInetUdp protocols

  RSocket::Ioctl() method supports KIoctlTcpNotifyDataSent command only. An attempt to use any other command will result in KErrGeneral return value.

  RSocket::SetOpt() method supports KSONonBlockingIO, KSOBlockingIO, KSoInetEnumInterfaces, KSORecvBuf and KSOSendBuf options only. (KSORecvBuf and KSOSendBuf options are dummy and don't influent to RSocket work.) An attempt to use any other option will result in KErrGeneral return value.

  RSocket::GetOpt() method supports KSoInetNextInterface option only. An attempt to use any other option will result in KErrGeneral return value.

Contact Information

Download from Peroon web site

For any questions and inquires for additional functionality please send email to support@peroon.com.

Copyright Disclaimer

Copyright 2003 Peroon R&D Ltd.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute, this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of the copyright holders be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software with specific, written prior permission, and that no fee is charged for further distribution of this software, or any modifications thereof. The copyright holder makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA, PROFITS, QPA OR GPA, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.