Download

You can download the Spark Communications Services SDK from the BlackBerry developer resources web site.

Configure

Your application will use the SDK to connect to the BlackBerry Infrastructure. Before it can do this, you must have a BlackBerry Online Account and you must add your application to that account.

Add your Application

To add your application to your BlackBerry Online Account, visit the Add Application page. Provide the Name and Entitlement ID of your application, and ensure that Communications Services are enabled. When you are finished, click the Add Application button.

Configure your Domain

When you are building and testing your application, you will run it in the Spark Communications Services sandbox environment.

The sandbox environment is only for development and testing your application. When you are ready to release your application, follow the instructions on your application's BlackBerry Online Account page in the Production tab to obtain and configure a domain for production use.

Within the sandbox environment, your application is assigned a private domain. After you add your application, you will be asked to configure your domain to support your user authentication mechanism and how your application will manage its security keys.

To get started using the SDK's example applications, you should configure your new domain as shown below.

Ensure that the Enable User Authentication feature toggle switch is in the off position. This means users of your application don't need to authenticate using a real identity provider while you are developing and testing it.

Disabling user authentication is supported in the sandbox environment only. Your released application will use a real identity provider, as described in the Identity Providers guide.

Ensure that the BlackBerry Key Management Service feature is selected.

For most applications, BlackBerry recommends using the SDK's built-in Key Management Service. When your application uses that feature, the SDK synchronizes keys for you automatically.

Finish configuring your new domain with the Create Domain button. The next screen will display your domain's ID and allow you to configure Push Notifications that let the BlackBerry Infrastructure send messages to your application even when it is not running.

Platform Guides

The next steps that you take depend on what platform you are developing your application for. Select one of the following guides to help you finish integrating the SDK into your application.

Platform	Description
Android	Steps to integrate the SDK into your Android application.
iOS	Steps to integrate the SDK into your iOS application.
Web	Steps to integrate the SDK into your web site or web application.
Node.js	Steps to integrate the SDK into your Node.js application or server.

Cordova

You can download code for an Apache Cordova plugin to access the BlackBerry Spark Communications Services SDK. With this plugin, you can use the SDK in a Cordova application running on Android and iOS. The plugin serves as a bridge between your Cordova application and the standard SDKs for Android and iOS, which must be downloaded separately.

The prerequisites for the SDK for Android or the SDK for iOS still apply when your application uses the Cordova plugin.

Examples

BlackBerry provides several example applications that demonstrates basic SDK usage such as:

How to authenticate a user using OpenID Connect or OAuth 2.0
How to start the SDK.
Starting a new chat.
Opening an existing chat.
Sending and receiving messages in a chat.
User typing indicators, message delivery and message read receipts.
Voice and Video calling.