Second International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology, ICETET-09
APP2MID: Methodology for Conversion of Java Applets
Animations to Java MIDlets
Kapil Kadam and Sameer Sahasrabudhe
Abstract—Java applets are used in e-learning, mainly for
creating animations. Many leading educational and
professional organizations have large repositories of
animations, created using Java applets which are mostly for
desktops. Use of mobile phones is increasing especially amongst
students, and creating new eLearning content for mobile
phones is resource intensive. It is desirable to have a
methodology to adapt existing Java animations on mobile
phones. This paper presents a methodology (APP2MID) which
converts the Java applet into Java MIDlet that can run on
mobile phones. The conversion methodology is divided in three
logical phases and will help the user to create MIDlets from the
available Java applets, maintaining the original programming
logic. We illustrate this methodology using a case study.
I. INTRODUCTION
J AVA applets have been one of the popular content
creation format for eLearning. Many leading
organizations in educational and professional domains
have large repositories of educational animations created
using JAVA [4].
Concurrently, mobiles are becoming even more common
as compared to computers. The portability and the reach of
mobiles is quite more than that of the computers and
therefore it is not at all surprising that mobiles are preferred
as a medium for educational content dissemination [1], [2].
Looking at the large number of Open Source JAVA
applets available for the desktops, it is desirable to have a
methodology to convert those for mobiles in a seamless
manner. In this paper we present one such methodology:
APP2MID.
Java SE (Java standard edition) is used for creating applets
especially for desktops. These applets cannot run on mobile
phones because the APIs used are not supported by mobile
phones. For creating applications for mobile phones and
other handheld devices, J2ME (Java 2 Micro edition)
technology is used [6]. J2ME represents a simpler version of
Java SE, with a reduced feature set, for the devices with
limited memory, small screen sizes, alternative input
methods, and slow processors [7].
Manuscript received August 20, 2009. This work was supported in part
by the TTSL IIT Bombay Center of Excellence in Telecommunications
(TICET) project of IIT Bombay.
Kapil Kadam is M. Tech. from Walchand College of Engineering,
Sangli, India and is currently working as Project Engineer at the
Department of Computer Science and Engineering of IIT Bombay, India.
Phone: +91-22-25764987; fax: +91-22-25720022; e-mail:
kkapilkk@gmail.com
Sameer Sahasrabudhe is a graduate in Fine arts. He is currently working
as a Project Manager at the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering of IIT Bombay, India. Phone: +91-22-25764913; fax: +91-22-
25720022; e-mail: s1000brains@iitb.ac.in
978-0-7695-3884-6/09 $26.00 © 2009 IEEE
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It has two important APIs (Application Programming
Interface) - The CLDC API (Connected Limited Device
Configuration) and the MIDP API (Mobile Information
Device Profile) [8].
Only a subset of Core Java APIs java.lang, java.io and
java.util are supported by J2ME. For example, the java.lang
in J2ME (CLDC 1.1 version) has 17 classes and 1 interface,
compared with the java.lang of Java SE (JDK 1.6 version),
which has 35 classes and 8 interfaces. J2ME also possesses
many features which are specific and limited to J2ME itself.
Table 1 shows the core Java APIs supported by CLDC 1.1 [8].
TABLE I
CORE JAVA SE APIS SUPPORTED BY J2ME
Package Classes
java.lang
Boolean, Byte, Character, Class, Integer, Long,Double,
Float, Math, Object, Runnable, Runtime, Short, String,
StringBuffer, System, Thread, Throwable
ByteArrayInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream,
DataInput, DataOutput, DataInputStream,
java.io DataOutputStream, InputStream, OutputStream,
InputStreamReader, OutputStreamWriter, PrintStream,
Reader, Writer
Calendar, Date, Enumeration, Hashtable, Random, Stack,
java.util
TimeZone, Vector
From the earlier discussion, following points are evident:
1. Large numbers of Java applets animations are
available.
2. J2ME does not support all the APIs that are used in
Java applet animations creation
3. Re-creation of same animations for mobiles would
be resource intensive.
4. Maintaining the original programming logic of the
animation is critical.
Seamless conversion of applets to MIDlets is certainly
desirable. In this paper we present one such methodology. A
case study is used to illustrate the methodology in detail.
II. CONVERSION PROCESS: APP2MID
The conversion process APP2MID has three logical phases.
These phases convert the original Java applet into various
formats, in a cascading manner to achieve the final goal of
creating a MIDlet. The Java applet is not converted directly
into MIDlet, as it may create problems for code extraction.
For example, multiple uses of standard keywords like ‘if’, in
a Java applet may get replaced by single one in Java MIDlet.
Due to the unsystematic code identification it can lead to
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 compilation errors and some unidentifiable exceptions too. In order to achieve this we wrote another class “Converter”
In order to avoid such errors we designed the methodology in the “APP2MIDconverter.java” program mentioned in
in three phases, which are described below. Refer Fig. 1. Phase-II. This class “Converter” does the MIDlet XML to
Java MIDlet conversion. The output of this phase is a desired
Java MIDlet. Schematic representation of this phase is shown
Phase I Phase II Phase III Testing in Fig. 4.
Phase
Java Applet Applet XML to MIDlet XML
to Applet MIDlet XML to Java MIDlet
XML Output
Transformation MIDlet Testing
MIDlet XML
Input XML to XML
Applet XML Transformer

Fig. 1: Conversion Phases Class

XMLTraverser DTD
Validation
A. Conversion Phase-I
The first phase converts the Java applet to a XML file for Input
better representation than normal text and mapping. This Package.xml Valid MIDlet
XML
phase has Java applet as the input. This applet is converted
to XML using the available Java to XML converter
(Java2XML) [9]. After conversion the applet XML is
validated by using a browser (Internet Explorer) [3]. Fig. 3: Conversion Phase-II
Java and XML both are platform independent and XML is
fully compatible with Java. Standard Java class structure can
be well represented in the form of XML tags, so that Java Input XML to Java Output
MIDlet XML Converter
classes, methods, interfaces, packages are processed easily Java MIDlet

by maintaining the Java programming standards [5]. Class

The produced representation allows easy extraction of the
semantics of source code, its analysis and transformation.
The output of this phase is a valid XML of the applet.
Schematic representation of this phase is shown in Fig. 2.
B. Conversion Phase-II
Input Java to DTD Valid
Java Applet XML Validation Applet XML
Converter
Fig. 2 Conversion Phase-I
The second phase transforms the output of Phase-I, i.e.
applet XML to a MIDlet XML. The motivation of this phase
is to transform the applet XML into MIDlet XML. This enable
mapping of applet XML into another XML to obtain the
desired MIDlet structure.
In order to address this we wrote a Java program
(APP2MIDconverter.java), containing class “XML Traverser”
traverses each node of the applet XML and does the XML to
XML transformation. This created Package.xml file which
contained XML representation of basic MIDlet program
structure. The transformed XML is validated in a similar way
as mentioned in the Phase-I. The output of this phase is a
valid XML of the desired MIDlet. Schematic representation of
this phase is shown in Fig. 3.
C. Conversion Phase-III
The third phase converts the output of Phase-II, i.e. MIDlet
XML to a Java MIDlet. The motivation of this phase is to
convert MIDlet XML into Java MIDlet which is the desired
final output.
Converter
Fig. 4: Conversion Phase-III
D. Testing Phase
Testing is the most important way of assuring (or
controlling) the quality of software or application developed.
The third phase delivers the Java MIDlet as final output.
The resultant Java MIDlet is tested with Sun’s Wireless
toolkit emulator [10] by selecting MIDP2.0 & CLDC1.1 APIs,
that gives the desired output, the actual results are presented
in further sections. An error free result leads towards the
actual device testing. Mobile phones like Nokia N72 [12] &
Sony Ericsson W58i [13] were used for testing as they are
supported by MIDP 2.0 & CLDC1.1 APIs.
III. CASE STUDY
CONVERSION OF ANIMATIONS IN PROJECT OSCAR
Project OSCAR stands for Open Source Courseware
Animations Repository [11]. This is a project of IIT Bombay
and hosts over hundred animations, which covers different
subjects from standard 7th to standard 12th like Mathematics,
Physics, Biology and Chemistry. It also covers Engineering
subjects for Undergraduate and Post Graduate studies like
Networking, Mechanical engineering, etc.
Most of the animations from the repository are Java
applets, which is suitable for testing the conversion
methodology presented in this paper.
We have selected Basic Angles animation from
Mathematics repository as a test case [11]. BasicAngles.java

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 is a Java applet program which contains the code for the
basic angles animation. Fig. 5 shows the output of
BasicAngles.java applet when executed in applet viewer and
Fig. 6 shows the small portion of the code.
of the Phase-I, which is the applet XML (Figure7). After
processing through conversion phase-II we got the MIDlet
XML (Fig 8), which shows the portion of MIDlet XML. At
the end of conversion phase-II we get the XML
representation of MIDlet.
The desired output at this phase is XML representation of
MIDlet. The transformation adds packages required for
MIDlet. For example package “javax.microedition.midlet”
represented as XML tag
<import module=“javax.microedition.midlet”>
in the MIDlet XML (Fig. 8).

Fig 5: Basic angles animation applet

Fig. 7: XML applet

Fig 6: BasicAngles.java applet code

A. Phase-I Results
As mentioned in the conversion phase-I the input for this
phase is Java applet program i.e. BasicAngles.java (refer
Fig. 6) which is converted into applet XML. The output of
conversion phase-I is shown in Fig. 7 which shows the small
portion of the XML applet.
As mentioned in the conversion phase-I about standard
Java class structure & XML tags, it can be seen from the Fig.
7 that the standard class structure of Java applet (refer Fig.
6) is well represented in the form of XML.
For example class “BasicAngles” with visibility attribute Fig. 8: XML MIDlet
“public” (Fig 6) is represented as a XML tag
<class name=“BasicAngles” visibility=“public”> C. Phase-III Results
in Fig 7. Other code of Java applet was also converted in the The output of phase-II i.e. MIDlet XML is the input for
form of XML tags. phase-III. The XML representation of desired MIDlet intends
to convert this into Java MIDlet. Every tag of this XML is
B. Phase-II Results
processed and converted into Java MIDlet format
As said earlier the input of the second phase is the output maintaining its standards.

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 For example XML tag
<import module=“javax.microedition.midlet”>
from Fig. 8 is converted to following Java statement of
MIDlet.
“import javax.microedition.midlet”
as shown in Fig. 9.
The rest of the XML tags are also processed to generate the
Java MIDlet. The generated Java MIDlet is the mobile
version of the original Java applet i.e. BasicAngles.java and
ready to be tested. The output of conversion phase-III is
shown in Fig. 9 which shows the small portion of the final
Java MIDlet code.
Fig. 9: Java MIDlet
D. Testing Phase Results
We tested the resultant Java MIDlet on Sun’s wireless
toolkit emulator, which is mainly used to test J2ME
applications. The MIDlet worked without any errors. The
results are shown in Fig. 10.
Fig. 10: Java MIDlet Animation on Sun’s wireless toolkit
emulator
IV. CONCLUSION
The outputs of the case study of the Basic Angles
animation applet, confirms the success of the conversion
methodology: APP2MID. Some more applets were also tried
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and were converted successfully. On critical review of the
converted applets we have found the following aspects,
which can be addressed in the future:
• It is necessary to try and convert all possible Java SE
classes used in animation.
• The MIDlet created using this methodology was of the
same screen size of the applet. This feature made it
mandatory to the user to use scrolling to view the
animation on the smaller screen size of mobile phones.
• The MIDlet created using this methodology will be
compatible only with the mobile handsets with API
support of MIDP 2.0, and CLDC 1.1.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge the support of Prof. Sridhar Iyer,
(Project OSCAR, IIT Bombay) and Prof. D.B. Kulkarni
(Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli) for their
invaluable guidance. We also acknowledge the support of
the TICET Project (Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, IIT Bombay).
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