Mobile Python: Rapid Prototyping of Applications on the Mobile Platform

10.3. Custom Modules and Automatic Updating

In this section, we explain how you can make modules by yourself for PyS60. The process in itself is almost trivial. However, custom modules are an extremely powerful feature of PyS60, with remarkably interesting implications. Not only can you structure your code more efficiently, but you can also make totally new kinds of programs, thanks to the dynamic nature of PyS60.

To demonstrate this, we show how to update your PyS60 applications automatically from the web and how to create a simple plug-in mechanism for your program.

10.3.1. Custom Modules

There is nothing really special in custom modules. You just create a source code file, put some custom functions in it and copy it to a certain location on your mobile phone. After this, you can import the new module into your programs, in the same way as any standard PyS60 module.

Let's go through this process step by step. First, let's make a file that contains a simple function and the import statement that imports the modules needed by the function, as usual. Here, we use the askword() function from Example 10:

import appuifw

def askword():
    d = appuifw.query(u"Type your name", "text")
    appuifw.note(u"Hi" + str(word))

Save these five lines to a file called mymodule.py on your PC. Next, we need to upload this file to your phone. However, to be usable as a module, the file has to be copied to a special directory, E:\Python\lib, on your phone. If this directory does not exist, you have to create ...