WAP Bookmark Messages.

What is WAP Bookmark ?

WAP Bookmark can be used to send a location of a WAP site to a mobile phone. A WAP Bookmark is basically a specially encoded message which includes a link to a WAP or WWW address. WAP Bookmark is specified on top of WDP (WAP Datagram Protocol, resembled the UDP protocol in the Internet); as such, it can be delivered over any WDP-supported bearer, such as GPRS or SMS.

WAP Bookmark messages are encoded as XML. Because the XML format is not suitable for low bandwidth applications such as SMS, the messages are encoded using WBXML which stands for WAP Binary XML. When a message is encoded using this standard, common tags and attribute values are replaced with a single byte.

The full specification of this format van be found at www.w3.org.

Sample of a WAP Bookmark message in XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE si PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD SI 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/si.dtd">
<CHARACTERISTIC-LIST>
<CHARACTERISTIC TYPE="BOOKMARK">
<PARM NAME="NAME" VALUE="yahoo"/>
<PARM NAME="URL" VALUE="http://wap.yahoo.com"/>
</CHARACTERISTIC>
</CHARACTERISTIC-LIST> 

The same WAP Bookmark message in WBXML (excluding the WSP header) :

0x45                  <CHARACTERISTIC-LIST>
0xC6                  <CHARACTERISTIC
0x7F                  TYPE="BOOKMARK" ( application/x-wap-prov.browser-bookmarks )
0x01                  >
0x87                  PARAM
0x15                  NAME="NAME"
0x11                  VALUE
0x03                  String value follows
0x57                  'W'
0x61                  'A'
0x70                  'P'
0x20                  ' '
0x42                  'B'
0x6F                  'o'
0x6F                  'o'
0x6B                  'k'
0x6D                  'm'
0x61                  'a'
0x72                  'r'
0x6b                  'k'
0x20                  ' '
0x4D                  'M'
0x65                  'e'
0x73                  's'
0x73                  's'
0x61                  'a'
0x67                  'g'
0x65                  'e' 
0x00                  end of string value
0x01                  </PARAM>
0x08                  <PARAM?
0x17                  NAME="URL"
0x11                  VALUE
0x03                  String value follows
0x68                  'h'
0x74                  't'
0x74                  't'
0x70                  'p'
0x3A                  ':'
0x2F                  '/'
0x2F                  '/'
0x77                  'w'
0x61                  'a'
0x70                  'p'
0x2E                  '.'
0x79                  'y'
0x61                  'a'
0x68                  'h'
0x6F                  'o'
0x6F                  'o'
0x2E                  '.'
0x63                  'c'
0x6F                  'o'
ox6D                  'm'
0x00                  end of string value
0x01                  </PARAM>
0x01                  </CHARACTERISTIC>
0x01                  </CHARACTERISTIC-LIST>

Sending WAP Bookmark messages

WAP Push messages can be send using a SMPP connection, HTTP connection or GSM phone or modem. The message has to be encoded as an eight bit message. You should also set the 'UDH' indication bit of the SMS message.