Phone 8 Wallet III : WalletAgents

This is the third part of a series about the Windows Phone 8 Wallet.

The menu :

Phone 8 Wallet I : Deals

Phone 8 Wallet II : Membership and Transactions

Phone 8 Wallet III : WalletAgents

Phone 8 Wallet IV : Wallet and NFC

Let’s talk about Wallet Agents. Not much to talk about it as it is fairly simple (If you are not using payment as I do).

What is a WalletAgent? MSDN states :

An implementation of a BackgroundAgent specifically designed to enable a wallet app to be notified about wallet operations related to wallet items specific to that app.

So the agent is called when you make specific kind of actions on a wallet item. It is also called (either automatically by the Wallet, or by the user) to refresh the wallet item.

Creating a Wallet Agent

Just add a new Background Agent to your solution :

Open your agent .cs file et make it inherit from WalletAgent instead of BackgroundAgent :

public class ContosoWalletAgent : Microsoft.Phone.Wallet.WalletAgent

Now, override the OnRefreshData method. It is the only method that interest me, as I am only working with WalletTransactionItem.

In this example, I’ll add 10 credits on the balance every time the item is refreshed :

 protected override async void OnRefreshData(Microsoft.Phone.Wallet.RefreshDataEventArgs args)
        {
            foreach (var walletItem in args.Items)
            {
                var transactionitem = walletItem as WalletTransactionItem;

                if (transactionitem == null) continue;

                int balance;

                if (int.TryParse(transactionitem.DisplayBalance.Split(' ')[0], out balance))
                {
                    balance = balance + 10;

                    transactionitem.DisplayBalance = balance + " points";

                    transactionitem.TransactionHistory.Add(Guid.NewGuid().ToString(), 

                           new WalletTransaction
                           {
                             Description = "Agent operation",
                             DisplayAmount = "+ 10",
                             IsTransactionTimeValid = true,
                           });


                    await transactionitem.SaveAsync();
                }
                else
                {
                    // Error, do something
                }
            }


            base.OnRefreshData(args);
        }

Don’t forget to call either base.OnRefreshData(args) or NotifyComplete at the end of the method, to warn the task is complete.

Now add the agent solution to your solution :

Now if you refresh the card associated with the agent, you’ll see the balance changing :

Conclusion

Well as you see there is not much to talk about BackgroundAgent when using the WalletTransactionItem. It is different if you use payment and secure elements, but it is a totally different (and complex) world. If I’m lucky to work on such solution one day, I’ll be happy to blog about it.

A small sample app with WalletAgent HERE