980809 - Enable silent SMS in the mozMessaging API

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: DOM: Device Interfaces, defect)

Description

[Jose Manuel Cantera]

There are different use cases (payments, notifications to the operator ...) under which it would be interesting to send a silent SMS, a MO SMS without storing it on the SMS database or requesting delivery status, which means that the SMS will not show any notifications and will not appear in any SMS application consuming the mozMessaging API.

We can add a new member to the dictionary SmsSendParameters that allows to indicate whether the SMS should be silent or not.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

Note that adding that dictionary member won't be feature detectible.  Is that OK?

Comment 2

[Jose Manuel Cantera]

But do we really need that? Sending a silent SMS is something can be done by any implementation, or do you envisage a special permission for this operation?

thanks

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to Jose M. Cantera from comment #2)
> But do we really need that? Sending a silent SMS is something can be done by
> any implementation, or do you envisage a special permission for this
> operation?

I was basically assuming that we're going to hide this capability behind a permission, yes.  It seems dangerous to allow any app which can send text messages to also be able to send silent text messages.

CCing Hsin-Yi, Vicamo and Gene who have also been involved in designing this API so that they can provide input.

Comment 4

[Gene Lian (I already quit Mozilla)]

We already support sending and receiving the silent SMS in internal RIL. For receiving, Gecko can set some default numbers (pre-defined by the vendor) so that it will not pop up notifications or save it into DB when receiving this kind of SMS. For sending, we can send SMS in a silent way so that it won't show up in the DB as well as the conversation list [1]. The remaining thing we need to do is just to hook it up to the Messaging API.

Regarding the permission, I agree with Ehsan, we shouldn't expose this capability to any apps, because the silent SMS usually plays the role of communicating with operators/vendors, which is more like a feature that can only be enabled in the certified app. If we want to enable the silent-SMS in the same Messaging API, it should have a more strict permission other than the normal one.

[1] http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/system/gonk/RadioInterfaceLayer.js#3912

Comment 5

[Kyle Machulis [:qdot] [:kmachulis] (INACTIVE)]

Cleaning up Device Interfaces component, and mass-marking old FxOS bugs as incomplete.

If any of these bugs are still valid, please let me know.