RAD Server has built in support for the OpenAPI (Swagger) REST endpoint documentation format. It provides both YAML and JSON definitions of the endpoints. RAD Server is the REST server framework that ships with RAD Studio (Delphi and C++Builder). A single site and multisite license come with RAD Studio Enterprise and Architect respectively. The open source Swagger Code Gen project can take your Swagger definition file and generate clients for your REST endpoints in a wide variety of languages and frameworks which should work on most platforms. This allows you to access RAD Server from pretty much any language or framework. Want to connect your Flutter client to RAD Server? Have at it using the dart client. Want to connect your fancy Python AI project to RAD Server? Have at it using the python client. What to connect your legacy Android app to RAD Server? There is an Android client for that. Want to connect from PHP (the language that runs 80% of the web) to RAD Server? There is a PHP client for that. There is an online Swagger Editor where you can upload your definition file and generate the clients. I took the default RAD Server Swagger JSON file (available from /api/apidoc.json) which is only the built in endpoints for RAD Server and plugged it into the online Swagger Editor. Once you add your own custom resource modules to RAD Server with your own endpoints it would contain your endpoints as well. You can find out more about documenting your RAD Server endpoints in the documentation. I generated a RAD Server REST client for each of their client options and uploaded that client to Github. The host was set to the default localhost:8080 search (which is what RAD Server’s debug server runs on by default).

In addition to REST Clients is also generates HTML documentation and Atlassian Confluence markup. The Confluence markup is in the cwiki project and the different HTML documentations are in dynamic-html, html, and html2 projects. The html2 project is probably the nicest of the three as it also contains sample usage code with each endpoint that corresponds to the other Swagger clients (curl, Java, Android, Obj-C, Javascript, C#, PHP, Perl, and Python). The online Swagger Editor itself uses the live documentation Swagger UI project which you can also download and use with your Swagger YAML/JSON files.

What was somewhat disappointing about the Swagger CodeGen clients so far is that of the three clients that I tried (bash, csharp, and powershell) all of them require extra work to get running. They have various syntax errors out of the box that have to be fixed before they will compile. This was not unique to the RAD Server JSON definition either as I tried the Swagger CodeGen with other Swagger JSON files with similar results. Additionally, I’m not so sure how clean this generated code is as it seems to have a lot of boilerplate code for what are relatively simple endpoints. The cross platform FireMonkey client code (for Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, and Linux) generated by Auto Tables for RAD Server feels much easier to read and simpler to use. At the same time starting out with a pre-generated client in the programming language or framework you need really goes a long way towards making RAD Server accessible and eases the integration process.

Here is a list of the REST clients/projects I generated for RAD Server:

• ada
• akka-scala
• android
• apex
• bash
• clojure
• cpprest (generator errored out)
• csharp
• csharp-dotnet2
• cwiki
• dart
• dart-jaguar
• dynamic-html
• eiffel
• elixir
• elm
• erlang-client
• flash
• go
• groovy
• haskell-http-client
• html
• html2
• java
• javascript (generator errored out)
• javascript-closure-angular
• jaxrs-cxf-client
• jmeter
• kotlin
• lua
• objc
• perl
• php
• powershell
• python
• qt5cpp
• r
• ruby
• rust
• scala
• scala-gatling
• scalaz
• swift
• swift3
• swift4
• tizen
• typescript-angular
• typescript-angularjs
• typescript-aurelia
• typescript-fetch
• typescript-inversify
• typescript-jquery
• typescript-node

Head over and check out all 50+ clients in many languages for RAD Server over on GitHub.

Delphi 10.3 Rio FireMonkey apps are cross platform with a single codebase and single UI that target the Android, IOS, Macos, Windows, and Linux platforms (FMXLinux was recently added to Delphi 10.3 Rio Enterprise and Architect). You can also deploy Delphi FireMonkey apps to the web using websockets and HTML5. The method for doing this is basically the FireMonkey app runs on a Windows or Linux server and it’s canvas draws are sent to the web browser via a websocket. Each user connection runs one copy of the app on the server (so one user one app). The server is running the app so it needs enough hardware for however many concurrent apps you want to run.

For FireMonkey Windows apps this can be achieved through Thinfinity VirtualUI. Thinfinity is a commercial product which a cost per concurrent user. The user connects to the Thinfinity server, Thinfinity launches the FireMonkey app, handles the user input, and sends the drawing to the browser client. Thinfinity has been around for quite a few years and I would consider it a pretty mature product. It supports enterprise features like load balancing and ActiveDirectory login. You can also use it with Windows apps written in other languages (like C++ and C#).

For FireMonkey Linux apps this can be achieved through FMXLinux and Gtk Broadwayd. FMXLinux is also a commercial product but has recently been made available to Delphi 10.3 Rio Enterprise and Architect developers for free (just open GetIt and install it). FMXLinux allows FireMonkey apps to run on Linux desktops using the Gtk UI library. Gtk comes with an application called Broadwayd which will stream the Gtk app out to HTML5 via websockets. Broadwayd runs on a single port (8080) per app and you can click compile in Delphi 10.3 Rio and see your FireMonkey app in the browser served up from you Linux machine if you start the broadwayd server prior to deployment. If you want to run a pool of FireMonkey apps on Linux like Thinfinity does on Windows you can set up a Linux bash script to do so.

The purpose of the bash script is to run X number of FireMonkey apps through broadwayd (remember 1 app per port) and then use a load balancer make all of the apps accessible via a single port. In order to do this second part there is a Linux package called balance which can do this for you. One limitation of it is that it will only do 16-32 apps in it’s app pool unless you compile the source yourself. You can install balance with “sudo apt install balance” on Ubuntu or “yum install balance” on CentOS. Broadwayd and balance are open source and free applications but the solution is also not as polished as Thinfinity UI. You could also build something in Delphi using TidMappedPortTCP instead of using balance. For commercial deployments I’d recommend going with Thinfinity though.

Here is the sample bash script I put together which handles hosting multiple apps on a single port for you. Save the script as gtkcloud.sh and “chmod +x gtkcloud.sh”. It takes two parameters. The first parameter is the path to the app you want to run and the second parameter is the port you want to run the load balanced app on.

#!/bin/bash
for i in {1..16}
do
    nohup broadwayd :$i &
    export GDK_BACKEND=broadway
    export BROADWAY_DISPLAY=:$i
    $1 &
    #echo ""
done

servers=""

for ii in {1..16}
do
    let port=8080+$ii
    servers="$servers localhost:$port:1 %"
done

echo $servers

balance $2 $servers

Example usage is as follows and would host 16 instances of /root/FireMonkeyPaintDemo on port 81.

./gtkcloud.sh /root/FireMonkeyPaintDemo 81

And that is all there is to it. You can run your Delphi FireMonkey apps on Android, IOS, Macos, Windows, Linux, AND the web using a single codebase and single UI.

Download the gtkcloud broadwayd + balance bash script for hosting Delphi FireMonkey FMXLinux apps.

Don’t have Delphi 10.3 Rio Enterprise or Architect? You can still use FMXLinux with you Delphi Pro FireMonkey apps.

Head over and check out the full website for FMXLinux and learn about deploying Delphi desktop apps to Linux.

RAD Studio 10.3.2 Rio (Delphi + C++Builder) has been released with some significant enhancements to the Firemonkey framework. 10.3.2 includes a new MacOSX 64-bit compiler to satisfy new Apple requirements for desktop development. Shortly before the release of 10.3.2 FMXLinux was made available via GetIt as well bringing Firemonkey to Linux (and HTML5). This means that the target platforms that Firemonkey currently officially supports are now Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, MacOS 32-bit, MacOS 64-bit, Android 32-bit, IOS 32-bit, IOS 64-bit, Linux 64-bit, and HTML5 (through web sockets). That is a pretty impressive target platform list to be able to deploy to with a single UI and single codebase using natively compiled code.

Items from the release that related to cross platform Firemonkey are:

• FireMonkey styles performance optimization
• Better FullScreen mode on iOS including visible status bar
• Android FireBase Support
• Android Improvements to icons for all notifications.
• Updates to Google Play services and Maps to match Firebase version support requirements.
• Firebase replaces Google Cloud Messaging (deprecated by Google).
• FireMonkey Linux provides the ability to create GUI applications for Linux,
• Improvements in FMX support for the macOS platform, for both 64-bit and 32-bit apps.
• TEdit improvements on Android.
• Improved compatibility with older versions of Android.
• TMediaPlayer quality on Android and Windows.

The list of fixes applied to FireMonkey 10.3.2 are as follows:

Check out the full list of over 400 fixes for Delphi 10.3.2 FireMonkey on Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, and HTML5!

Developer David Nottage has released a free IDE Expert plus MacOS companion app for Delphi 10.3.2 to enhance the management of SDKs within the IDE, enhance the management of PAServer on MacOS, and tweak IOS deployment in Delphi 10.3.2. It has an expert which gets installed into the IDE and then it also has a companion app that runs on your Mac for managing SDKs. The features that Mosco lists are:

• An much enhanced experience of adding frameworks to SDKs (lists all available public frameworks in the SDK)
• Instantly switch between SDKs, including for macOS, iOS and Android
• Instantly switch between connection profiles
• Open Finder on the Mac to show where the deployed app is located
• Prompt when attempting to launch an app on an iOS device when the device is locked
• Alternative to PAServer Manager allowing you to manage multiple versions of PAServer on the Mac

Head over and check out the full blog post about the Mosco expert and then download it!

or

Head directly to GitHub and download the Mosco IDE Expert + companion app.

There are 50 new cross platform samples for Delphi 10.3 Rio FireMonkey available over on Github. The demos heavily feature low code ways of using components to do more with less code. The samples cover everything from JSON and XML to REST and the device Camera. Additionally, they cover things like asynchronous HTTP requests, animations, LiveBindings, grids, drawers, and much more. The demos are available to deploy on Android, IOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, and HTML5. The source code is freely available under a BSD license. LiveBindings and TFDMemTable components are used throughout most of the samples. Some samples are more extensive like the BubbleChatApp, the Camera sample, and the ToDoList demo. If you are just getting into FireMonkey development with Delphi or you are an old hat with Delphi there is something here for everyone. The TShadowEffect is used and examples of various Material Design elements are also visible in the demos. Some of the icons are from Material.io while some of the images used are from the Pexels site. Elements from other development tools like Cards, AppBars, BottomSheets, and Stateful controls are also demonstrated. The code used in the samples is Object Pascal but the same concepts can be used in C++Builder’s FireMonkey with the sample code easily translatable to C++. If you test these demos and have fixes on specific platforms you can contribute the fix back to the repo. Here is the full list of demos.

01-HelloWorld
02-HelloWorldStyled
03-StatelessCards
04-StatefulControl
05-OnChangeTracking
06-OnClick
07-SimpleTabs
08-FrameTabs
09-AsyncREST
10-StringGridWithJsonData
11-DrawerMenu
12-PlatformMenu
13-Animation
14-JSONStorage
15-BubbleChatApp
16-ChangeGlyphColor
17-ToggleButton
18-ButtonOnClick
19-IconButton
20-UpdateEditField
21-UpdateCheckBox
22-UpdateRadioButton
23-UpdateSwitch
24-UpdateScrollBar
25-UpdateDateEdit
26-ToolBar
27-FloatingActionButton
28-PopupMenuButton
29-FooterButtons
30-CustomFooterTabs
31-BottomSheets
32-SnackBar
33-ShowMessageDialog
34-OptionsDialog
35-RowsAndColumnLayout
36-Cards
37-Alignment
38-ListViewFromJson
39-ListViewFromStringList
40-DataImage
41-Fullscreen
42-TestConnection
43-Dial
44-TodoList
45-Calendar
46-Splitter
47-ProgressBar
48-ImageViewer
49-Camera
50-XML

Head over and check out all of the Cross Platform Samples for Android, IOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, and HTML5.

RAD Studio 10.3.3 Rio (Delphi + C++Builder) has been released with some significant enhancements to the Firemonkey framework. 10.3.3 includes a new Android 64-bit compiler to satisfy new Google Play requirements for deployment. This means that the target platforms that Delphi Firemonkey currently officially supports Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, MacOS 32-bit, MacOS 64-bit, Android 32-bit, Android 64-bit, IOS 32-bit, IOS 64-bit, Linux 64-bit, and HTML5 (through web sockets). That is a pretty impressive target platform list to be able to deploy to with a single UI and single codebase using natively compiled code.

Items from the release that related to cross platform Firemonkey are:

• Android 64-bit support for Delphi.
• iOS 13 and macOS Catalina (Delphi) Support.
• Camera fixes and enhancements on Android
• Support for Android 10, including specific improvements for the splash screen
• Improved support for editing, virtual keyboard, and IME for iOS 13
• Push notification improvements on iOS
• App Tethering: Improved stability, error handling, and enhanced samples
• FireDAC Fixes and updates
• macOS 64 Notarization and RTTI enhancements

The list of fixes applied to FireMonkey 10.3.3 are as follows:

Check out the full list of hundreds of fixes for Delphi 10.3.3 FireMonkey on Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, and HTML5!

Delphi is celebrating it’s 25th Anniversary this year and I am going to outline 25 different Delphi FireMonkey demos which should run cross platform on Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, and HTML5. The main repo for the demos is over on Github and there are 100 Cross Platform Samples there (plus the same set of demos for C++ developers!). In this post we are going to highlight 25 of the most significant demos in the 100 demo list. Let’s get started!

#1 98-EmojiApp – Display and use emoji’s.

#2 99-DrawApp – Draw tools and canvas.

#3 92-MusicPlayerApp – Play music files with TMediaPlayer.

#4 95-NewsReaderApp – Consume RSS feeds.

#5 79-EmailApp – Connect to IMAP and SMTP in this email app.

#6 85-EncryptedSQLite – Create and access an encrypted SQLite database.

#7 87-InstagramFeed – Create an Instagram style image feed.

#8 94-PlaySounds – Play sounds across multiple platforms.

#9 77-Signature – Record signatures on a canvas.

#10 65-WebView – Embed a webview (web browser) in your app.

#11 67-NotesApp – Classic take notes style app.

#12 69-MakeScreenshot – Take screenshots within your app.

#13 71-HTTPPost – Send an HTTP post request.

#14 89-HTTPImage – Download an image from HTTP.

#15 90-NativeConnectivity – Check the connectivity status of your device.

#16 88-RESTToSQLite – Download from a REST service and insert it into an SQLite database.

#17 57-RunAtStartup – Run code at the start of your app (after the splash screen).

#18 56-SimpleBarChart – Create a simple bar chart in your app.

#19 49-Camera – Utilize the device camera in your app.

#20 32-SnackBar – Create a pop up message bar at the bottom of your app.

#21 31-BottomSheets – Create a pop up menu from the bottom of the app.

#22 100-AnimatedGIF – Display animated GIFs in the app.

#23 09-AsyncREST – Make an asynchronous REST request from within your app.

#24 08-FrameTabs – Break up a large app across tabs into modular frames.

#25 44-TodoList – Create a classic todo app.

Finally, head over to the Delphi 25th Anniversary site to check out some history about Delphi and what’s ahead in 2020 according to the Delphi Roadmap.

Delphi Firemonkey lets you quickly build out prototype apps very quickly and deploy them to Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, and HTML5. I put together this Emoji Easter Eggs builder app over a couple days (between 5 and 10 hours). There are a number of different Delphi 10.3.3 FireMonkey features that are used within the app including Effects, LiveBindings, custom pixel access, sharing on mobile devices, the color picker panel components, and much more. The background color gradient can be customized,  the color of the egg, the font color, the text of the message, the design on the egg, the accessory included in the lower right of the egg, and stripes available on some of the designs. The only image used within the app is the grass image. The app was mainly developed and tested on Windows 10 so there may need to be polish done for it to work at 100% on the other platforms.  Deploying the app to HTML5 would be done via Thinfinity VirtualUI or broadwayd on Linux. The Linux version is possible via FMXLinux which is available in Delphi 10.3.3 Enterprise and Architect. In addition to the Delphi features used Emojis (special graphical Unicode characters) were used for a large part of the graphics found within the Emoji Easter Egg builder app. Emoji graphics are provided by the font and platform itself so the graphics look different depending on which platform you run the app on. One the emoji egg is configured how you would like it you can take a screenshot of your configuration. The screenshots can be saved or shared depending on the platform the app is run on.

Head over and download the full source code for the Emoji Easter Egg builder app in Delphi 10.3.3 FireMonkey on Github.

RAD Studio 10.4 Sydney (Delphi + C++Builder) has been released with some significant enhancements to the Firemonkey framework. 10.4 includes new Metal API support on macOS and iOS and it brings significant performance improvements. Additionally, there is a new TBufferedLayout control which will cache painting of controls contained inside of it. The product itself received over 1000 updates and fixes across the IDE, RTL, VCL, and FMX. There are a ton of updates and new features in this release which makes it difficult to catalog them all!

Items from the release that are related to cross platform Firemonkey are:

• Apple’s new launch screen storyboard requirement.
• Delphi memory management is now unified across all supported platforms – mobile, desktop, and server.
• New styled TMemo component on the Windows platform.
• FMXLinux integration for building Linux GUI applications in Enterprise and Architect.
• TWebBrowser control for iOS is now implemented using the WKWebView API
• macOS implementation of Media Player control now used AVFoundation
• Expanded HTTP and REST Client libraries with additional HTTPS features
• LiveBindings Performance and Features Enhancements

The list of fixes applied to FireMonkey 10.4 are as follows:

Head over and check out the full list of updates for Delphi 10.4 Firemonkey.

One of my all time favorite objects in Delphi is TStringList which I have been using for over 20 years. Most apps I write with Delphi usually contain at least one usage of TStringList. I rarely use arrays as TStringList usually fills that space in my toolchest (the updated array syntax makes them tempting though). TFDMemTable is becoming the new TStringList for me though as now I rarely write an app that doesn’t use a TFDMemTable at least once. Yet TStringList is still use at least once as well!

TStringList is such a versatile object because it supports easily returning it’s contents as a string and saving/loading those same contents from a file. It easily handles key value pairs, splitting strings, and holding whatever string list (as the name implies) in memory. It handles sorting and even custom sorting. It can hold a list of objects that are tied to a string name and it can even free those objects automatically with the OwnsObjects property. It can ignore duplicates like an index database table. It can even be easily searched using IndexOf or Find.

Some of my favorite TStringList methods are TStringList.SaveToFile(), TStringList.LoadFromFile(), TStringList.SaveToStream(), TStringList.LoadFromStream(), TStringList.Append(), TStringList.AddObject(), TStringList.AddStrings(), and TStringList.IndexOfName(). While the properties I use most are probably TStringList.Text, TStringList.ValueFromIndex, and TStringList.Values. You can find a full breakdown of all of these methods and properties over in the Embarcadero DocWiki for TStringList.

The details are lost but I think I even used TStringList and the legendary FastStrings library at the core of a search engine index I built at the dawn of the new millennium with ~100,000 records. The results were returned in a second or two.

TFDMemTable Data IO

Lately I’ve been using TFDMemTable because it allows me to easily LiveBind bidirectional data to visual controls. TFDMemTable is a in memory database table that is part of the FireDAC (data access library) which is available in with FireMonkey in Delphi and C++Builder. TFDMemTable supports multiple columns (not just the 2 key value columns of TStringList), indexes, searching, exporting and importing from JSON, XML, binary, and even CSV format (through TFDBatchMove). TFDMemTable can be used as a visibility state machine for buttons through livebindings (see demo).

TFDMemTable is also the recipient of JSON that is automatically imported and consumed from TRESTResponse and TRESTResponseDatasetAdapter. The JSON can be imported directly, based on a specific root field name, or even flatted so all of the fields appear as columns. TFDMemTable can even be setup as persistent so that it automatically loads and saves the data contained within it (see demo) just like as if you had used SQLite.

TFDMemTable LocalSQL And Performance

I’ve easily used over 100,000 records in a TFDMemTable on the Windows platform and it was still pretty fast. TFDMemTable can be defined as a virtual table using the TFDLocalSQL component (see demo) and then queried as if it was an SQLite table using TFDQuery and TFDTable. There are a number of performance tuning tricks for TFDMemTable available in the Embarcadero DocWiki. These tricks include turning off transaction logging, setting a record maximum, and wrapping changes in a BeginBatch EndBatch clause. When I utilize TFDMemTable with a large number of records I usually deploy the code provided in the DocWiki and see significant performance improvements.

TFDMemTable Searching

There are a number of different ways to search a TFDMemTable. Some of them require an index and some of them do not. The two main ways I’ve used are TFDMemTable.Locate() and TFDMemTable.Lookup(). The Locate() function moves the cursor of the dataset to the record if it is found while the Lookup() function does not move the cursor to the found record and instead returns the found data. Locate() and Lookup() are not unique to TFDMemTable and can be used with most FireDAC based datasets. There is a third way to search a TFDMemTable and that is through the TFDMemTable.FindKey() method. FindKey() requires an index and I’ve heard it is faster than Locate() but I haven’t used it quite as much as Locate().

As we’ve seen in the above post it is really easy to work with text based files and create structured data files like JSON, XML, and CSV in Delphi FireMonkey using both TStringList and TFDMemTable. These two objects work cross platform on Android, IOS, Macos, Windows, and Linux and can really increase developer productivity through their use. Do you use TStringList and TFDMemTable? If not what do you use instead and why?

REST Debugger Tool

The REST Debugger is a UI based app that ships with Delphi 10.4 and allows you to easily craft REST requests. You can enter various login information and parameters and then see the results parsed into a grid based on the returned JSON. The JSON can even been flattened (using the Nested setting) so that all of JSON fields are available in the grid columns. This is great but now is where the magic happens. You can click Copy Components in the REST Debugger and then directly paste them onto your form or datamodule in Delphi 10.4 Sydney (this also works with C++Builder). It will automatically create all of the TRESTRequest components plus pipe it directly into a TFDMemTable where you can utilize the data at both design time (in the IDE) and runtime after a simple TRESTRequest.Execute call.

http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/en/REST_Debugger_Tool

MonkeyBuilder

If you are using Delphi or C++Builder to publish to the apps stores (verses ad hoc enterprise deployment) MonkeyBuilder can be a huge time saving utility. It offers “Single-click build/deployment of iOS and Android apps”, “Generates Android *.aab 32bit/64bit app bundles”,
“Automatically uploads *.ipa files to AppStoreConnect”, “Generate all required icons from a single 1024×1024 *.png file with the Icon Generator feature”, and a bunch of other features to streamline the app deployment process. If you’ve ever wasted time getting your apps into the App Stores take a look.

https://www.monkeybuilder.io/

TFDMemTable Design Time Edit DataSet

Delphi 10.4 has a feature with TFDMemTable where you can edit the data inside a TFDMemTable at design time. This feature can really speed up development because you can edit and bake data directly into a TFDMemTable during development. It also allows you to easily investigate the contents of a TFDMemTable at design time if you are using some of the other design time features like Executing a TRESTRequest at design time. Additionally, you can use the feature to create data at design time and LiveBind it to controls. One example of this is using TFDMemTable to hold the state of buttons (Visible True and False) across tabs. Instead of writing a bunch of state change code to toggle button visibility (especially on Android and IOS devices) you just set up the states at design time with the Edit DataSet feature and you’re done.

https://flixengineering.com/archives/398

Alcinoe Component Library For Delphi

If you’re looking to do video with Delphi FireMonkey it can be overwhelming because of all of the different formats (across devices) and building a high quality video player is not for the faint of heart. The Alcinoe component library is an open source library that has already done a lot of the hard work for you to make video work great in FireMonkey on Android and IOS. On top of the video player functionality it also offers “WebRTC delphi wrapper, native ios/android TEdit, improved firemonkey controls, Firebase cloud messaging, Android/ios facebook sdk login, Json/Bson Parser, ImageMagick wrapper, MongoDb client, and much more”. It appears to be somewhat widely used as it has a high GitHub Stars count as well.

https://github.com/Zeus64/alcinoe

100 Cross Platform Samples For FireMonkey

There are over 100 cross platform samples available in one of our GitHub repos. It features a lot of simple apps but also some more complex tricks like saving a TFDMemTable to SQLite, encrypting an SQLite database, a drawing app, an emoji navigator app, a mail app, a music player, an instagram style feed interface, an RSS newsreader, a notes app, persistent TFDMemTable sample, a connectivity tester, DNS lookup, ping sample, and many many more. There are a lot of tricks used in the samples utilizing LiveBindings (like the button visibility state trick) and even control drawing buffering with TScene. The first 50 samples are also available in C++.

https://github.com/FMXExpress/Cross-Platform-Samples

https://github.com/FMXExpress/CPP-Cross-Platform-Samples

TFrameStand / TFormStand

TFrameStand and TFormStand are an easy way to break up your app into “screens” (frames and forms). The T*Stand components provide nice transitions between the screens and make it easy to wire up the screens to navigation via code. TTabControl can also be used to do something similar but visually. For large projects with a lot of frames TFrameStand and TFormStand can be a lifesaver. It keeps the memory usage of your app down by not having all of the interface controls active at the same time. I don’t directly use TFrameStand but I did use the principles behind it using the TTabControl way to easily handle over 30 screens in an enterprise app for IOS. It helped to keep IOS from closing the app due to low memory on some of the original Ipad devices.

https://github.com/andrea-magni/TFrameStand

Boyer-Moore String Search

If you are looking to get some extra speed while searching through strings using native Object Pascal code there are some Boyer-Moore implementations that can help out. Apparently, it depends on your use case whether you get extra speed out of this algorithm or not but in the one case I tested I saw a speed increase of over 10%. Ten percent may not sound like a lot until you start talking about tasks that take a long time (like an hour). I’d rather wait 54 minutes than 60 minutes for a task to complete.

Object Pascal Boyer-Moore Version On StackOverFlow

Alternate Object Pascal Boyer-Moore Version On Delphi Dabbler

For Old Versions Of Delphi There Is The Original FastStrings Library

Delphi Javascript Bridge For TWebBrowser

If you’re looking to build apps in a similar fashion to how Electron apps are put together there is an open source library called ScriptGate which can really help out there. Basically you can use the native WebView control of the device (instead of Electron’s Chromium) and have Javascript call out to Delphi for access to the file system, notifications, and high performance code. ScriptGate makes it easy to build and ship such and app with Delphi. Electron apps are known for their high inefficient memory usage and Delphi provides a solution to that through ScriptGate. Delphi FireMonkey can compile to Windows, macOS, and Linux just like Electron. Additionally, Delphi also supports Android and IOS. You can leverage the power of the Delphi RTL from within your Electron like apps.

https://bitbucket.org/freeonterminate/scriptgate/src/master/

The latest version for FireMonkey is available in Delphi 10.4.1 and C++Builder 10.4.1. There are a massive number of fixes included which touch all major supported operating systems including Android, IOS, MacOS, Windows, and Linux. On the IOS side there was an API change for THTTPClient in the form of “The NSURLConnection API was deprecated by Apple on Mac OS X 10.11 and iOS 9, but it was still used in our HTTP Client Library. 10.4.1 introduces support for the newer NSURLSession API on both platforms. This change also addresses issues with proxy support on macOS.” Additional enhancements were made to the new TMemo on Windows and the new TMemo was also now upgraded on MacOS. Much of the “focus is on TMemo IME mode for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese (among other languages) but there are also general improvements in performance, stability, scrolling behavior, mouse selection, copy and paste, and more.” Lastly, these enhancements were added for FireMonkey:

• The Storyboard Launch Screen has added support for icon sizes required by Apple for iOS.
• Improved permissions management for iOS Push notifications
• TListView OnItemClick fires even if already selected
• Fixed an issue with inconsistent values for TMediaPlayer.Duration on Android
• iOS WebBrowser issue with external links
• TStringGrid OnCellDblClick event
• TListView Checkmark Accessory disappearing

Here is a list of bug fixes as they relate to FireMonkey and cross platform development with Delphi 10.4.1:

Head over and check out the full list of fixes and updates available in FireMonkey 10.4.1.

The post Significant Update Available For Delphi FireMonkey 10.4.1 On Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, And Linux first appeared on Delphi XE8 10 Seattle Berlin Tokyo Rio Sydney Firemonkey, Delphi Android, Delphi IOS.

Over on Github there is a sample email client which uses IMAP and SMTP for receiving and sending mail. It has basic features like viewing, composing, and sending mail. Full source code is available and it should run on Android, IOS, OSX, Windows, and Linux. It uses the Indy library which ships with Delphi 10.4.1 for IMAP and SMTP. The Indy library for email is quite extensive but only the most basic features were added into the app because it is a sample. Indy is also available for use from C++ from within C++Builder.

The email app is a sample app which is part of the 100 cross platform samples set. It was mainly tested on Windows so there may need to be small tweaks made for it to run smoothly on the other platform. It uses TFDMemTable to store settings and the mail itself. It only took 585 lines of code to build the entire app (obviously the libraries it uses are a lot more code).

Here is some sample code which shows how simple it is to send an SMTP message via Indy:

var
LMessage: TIdMessage;
LAddress: TIdEmailAddressItem;
begin
  // send
  LMessage := TIdMessage.Create(nil);
  try
    LAddress := LMessage.Recipients.Add;
    //LAddress.Name := '';
    LAddress.Address := SendToEdit.Text;
    //LMessage.BccList.Add.Address := '';
    //LMessage.From.Name := '';
    LMessage.From.Address := SendFromEdit.Text;
    LMessage.Body.Text := SendMemo.Lines.Text;
    LMessage.Subject := SendSubjectEdit.Text;

    IdSMTP1.Host := SettingsFDMemTable.FieldByName('SmtpHost').AsString;
    IdSMTP1.Port := SettingsFDMemTable.FieldByName('SmtpPort').AsInteger;
    IdSMTP1.Username := SettingsFDMemTable.FieldByName('SmtpUser').AsString;
    IdSMTP1.Password := SettingsFDMemTable.FieldByName('SmtpPass').AsString;
    case SmtpSSLCB.ItemIndex of
      -1,0: IdSMTP1.UseTLS := utNoTLSSupport;
      1: IdSMTP1.UseTLS := utUseExplicitTLS;
      2: IdSMTP1.UseTLS := utUseImplicitTLS;
      3: IdSMTP1.UseTLS := utUseRequireTLS;
    end;
    IdSMTP1.Connect;
    try
      IdSMTP1.Send(LMessage);
    finally
      IdSMTP1.Disconnect
    end;
  finally
    LMessage.Free
  end;

Head over and download the full source code for the app on Github for Delphi 10.4.1 FireMonkey on Android and IOS.

The post Powerful Cross Platform Email App Sample In Delphi 10.4.1 FireMonkey For Android And IOS first appeared on Delphi XE8 10 Seattle Berlin Tokyo Rio Sydney Firemonkey, Delphi Android, Delphi IOS.

Embarcadero is having a Delphi online event in November 2020 featuring two FireMonkey sessions. The first session is around a new FireMonkey book called Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey by Andrea Magni. The second session called FireMonkey and Multi-Device Panel is a roundtable featuring Marco Cantù, Ray Konopka, Kelver Merlotti, David Millington and Olaf Monien. The sessions will be available after the date for on demand viewing. There are also a lot of other Delphi sessions available at Delphicon 2020.

• Delphicon 2020 Keynote
• Delphi at the University: Insights for Students and Teachers
• High Performance Delphi
• Functional Programming With Delphi
• Delphi Product Management & Architect Panel
  Real-world CodeSite Logging Techniques
• Windows VCL Panel
  Leveraging High DPI in VCL Applications
• FireDAC Database Access Panel
• Code Faster in Delphi
• Upgrade and Migration Panel
  Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey
• Powering the Web with Delphi
• Introduction to Spring4D – Taking Delphi Development to the Next Level
• FireMonkey and Multi-Device Panel
• Delphi in Education Panel

Head over and watch the new Delphicon 2002 FireMonkey sessions from Embarcadero!

The post DelphiCon 2020 FireMonkey Sessions Available Starting November 19 first appeared on Delphi XE8 10 Seattle Berlin Tokyo Rio Sydney Firemonkey, Delphi Android, Delphi IOS.

The latest version for FireMonkey is available in Delphi 10.4.2 and C++Builder 10.4.2. There are a massive number of fixes included which touch all major supported operating systems including Android, IOS, MacOS, Windows, and Linux. It features updated support for iOS 14 in the App Store and ad-hoc enterprise deployment. Additionally, it features support for macOS 11 Big Sur on Intel and 64-bit App Store and enterprise deployment. Finally, it supports Android 11 and App Bundle format improvements. You can check out the full release notes here. Lastly, these enhancements were added for FireMonkey:

• MSIX support for Windows Store
• Enhanced Code Insight using the LSP technology for Delphi and C++
• Many Improved IDE features and a new IDE style
• A silent installer
• Delphi RTL and C++ RTL improvements, including Dinkumware STL
• Quality improvements for Delphi compiler speed, the C++ toolchain, FMX, database access, HTTP, and REST client libraries, Parallel Programming Library, SOAP, the Migration Tool, and more.

Here is a list of bug fixes as they relate to FireMonkey and cross platform development with Delphi 10.4.2:

Head over and check out the full fix list for RAD Studio 10.4.2 FireMonkey for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux.