MIDP stands for mobile information device profile and if you want to understand the MIDP programming model you have to consider the properties and attributes of the devices that you want your applications, or MIDlets, to run on.
All MIDlets have associated properties and attributes. Properties are standard system properties defined by the CLDC (connected limited device configuration) specification. They pertain to the platform and are maintained and managed by the application management system. Attributes are associated with MIDlets. There are required attributes that are available to all MIDlets, and there are optional attributes.
This short excerpt by Vartan Piroumian from InformIT, looks at the standard MIDP system properties and how to retrieve these properties.
The CLDC/MIDP supports system properties, which are key-value pairs that represent information about the platform and environment in which MIDP applications execute. Conceptually these are the same type of properties that you find in J2SE. Unfortunately, there is no java.util.Properties class in CLDC/MIDP to facilitate your handling of properties.
The MIDP specification defines only a small set of standard properties, which are shown in the table below. Implementations may support additional, manufacturer-specific system properties, but these are nonstandard. You should be aware of what manufacturer- or platform-specific features you use in order to anticipate portability issues.
Like J2SE applications, MIDP applications can retrieve a system property using the java.lang.System class. To retrieve the value of a property, use the System class method
String getProperty(String key)
This method retrieves the property value associated with the key whose value is specified in the call.
Standard CLDC System Properties
| Property Key | Description | Default Value |
|---|
| microedition.configuration | Name and version of the supported configuration | CLDC-1.0 |
| microedition.encoding | Default character encoding set used by the platform | ISO8859-1 |
| microedition.locale | Name of the platform's current locale | null |
| microedition.platform | Name of the host platform or device | null |
| microedition.profiles | Names of all supported profiles | null |
Read more about wireless J2ME platform programming at InformIT.
