How to retrieve a list of installed applications using .NETCF

In this short post I’d like to demonstrate how to retrieve a list of installed applications on a Windows Mobile device using OMA Client Provisioning. First you need to add a reference to the Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Configuration assembly. To retrieve the list we need to process a specific configuration (UnInstall Configuration Service Provider) using the ConfigurationManager.ProcessConfiguration method. The configuration is described in an XML and the response to this will also be described in XML

To query the device we process this configuration:

<wap-provisioningdoc>
  <characteristic-query type="UnInstall"/>
</wap-provisioningdoc>

The query above will only return installed application that can be uninstalled. The device would then respond with something like this:

<wap-provisioningdoc>
  <characteristic type="UnInstall">
    <characteristic type="Microsoft Application#2">
      <parm name="uninstall" value="0"/>
    </characteristic>
    <characteristic type="Microsoft Application#1">
      <parm name="uninstall" value="0"/>
    </characteristic>
    <characteristic type="Demo Home Screen">
      <parm name="uninstall" value="0"/>
    </characteristic>
  </characteristic>
</wap-provisioningdoc>

And here’s how to accomplish this task using .NETCF and C#

var doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(@"<wap-provisioningdoc><characteristic-query type=""UnInstall""/></wap-provisioningdoc>");
doc = ConfigurationManager.ProcessConfiguration(doc, true);
 
var nodes = doc.SelectNodes("wap-provisioningdoc/characteristic[@type='UnInstall']/characteristic/@type");
foreach (var node in nodes.Cast<XmlNode>())
{
    Trace.WriteLine(node.InnerText);
}

I hope you found this useful.