Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

Generic Conduit Framework

Generic Conduit Framework is the other approach to creating a conduit that handles two-way syncing. It is a framework that Palm set up to make it easier for developers to create a conduit.

The Generic Conduit Framework is a set of classes that work together to carry out the functions of a conduit. As might be expected, you subclass some of the classes and use others as is.

Advantages of Using Generic Conduit

There are some persuasive advantages to basing a conduit on this framework:

In some cases, you don’t need to write any code

The Generic Conduit Framework contains everything, including CfgConduit, GetConduitName, and so on. If you compile and register it without writing any code, it’ll be happy to two-way sync your Palm database to a file on the desktop. This approach requires the use of its own file format, however. If you don’t like that format, you need to customize the Generic Conduit Framework classes to some extent.

If you do have to write code, it might not be much

The number of classes and the number of methods is much less daunting than those found in the MFC Conduit framework. The other alternative—writing directly to the Sync Manager APIs—would require a great deal more code.

All the source code is available

The entire source code is provided (unlike the MFC Conduit framework); if you so desire, you can change any or all of it.