How to access and manipulate running applications

Applications running on a device are known as tasks. The TApaTaskList class is used to access applications running on a device, where each task has the potential to be an instance of the TApaTask class, which is used to manipulate or query tasks.

• How to find an application by its UID

• How to bring an application to the foreground

• See also

This code example shows how to find (and end) a running application (i.e. a task) by its UID using the TApaTaskList and TApaTask classes.

const TUid KMyAppUid = {0x10009e9f};
TApaTaskList taskList(CCoeEnv::Static()->WsSession());
TApaTask task = taskList.FindApp(KMyAppUid);
if (task.Exists())
    {
    task.EndTask();
    }

The following is a description of each line of the code example above:

• Line 1: Assigns to a constant the UID of the application that we are trying to find.

• Line 2: Creates an instance of a TApaTaskList taking a reference to a window server session. TApaTaskList allows access to all tasks running on the device.

• Line 3: Creates a TApaTask instance; this allows us to find out things about the task in question, for example: send a key-stroke to it, kill or end the task.

• Line 4: Whether the specified task exists on the device

• Line 6: Ends the task gracefully.

The following code example shows how to find an application by its name then bring it to the foreground.

_LIT(KAppName, "myApp");
TApaTaskList taskList(CCoeEnv::Static()->WsSession());
TApaTask task = taskList.FindApp(KAppName);
if (task.Exists())
    {
    task.BringToForeground();
    }

It may also be worth looking at the following entries in the FAQ Knowledge base C++ FAQs:

• FAQ-1129 What is an embeddable application?

• FAQ-1169 How should I load a URI? How should my application handle URIs?

• FAQ-1241 How do CEikDialog-based dialogs 'block' when using the EEikDialogFlagWait flag?