Fearless Cross-Platform Development with Delphi

David Cornelius

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800209251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Languages
• Index: Computer Science

Learn to rapidly build and deploy cross-platform applications from a single codebase with practical, real-world solutions using the mature Delphi 10.4 programming environmentKey Features• Implement Delphi's modern features to build professional-grade Windows, web, mobile, and IoT applications and powerful servers• Become a Delphi code and project guru by learning best practices and techniques for cross-platform development• Deploy your complete end-to-end application suite anywhereBook DescriptionDelphi is a strongly typed, event-driven programming language with a rich ecosystem of frameworks and support tools. It comes with an extensive set of web and database libraries for rapid application development on desktop, mobile, and internet-enabled devices. This book will help you keep up with the latest IDE features and provide a sound foundation of project management and recent language enhancements to take your productivity to the next level.You'll discover how simple it is to support popular mobile device features such as sensors, cameras, and GPS. The book will help you feel comfortable working with FireMonkey and styles and incorporating 3D user interfaces in new ways. As you advance, you'll be able to build cross-platform solutions that not only look native but also take advantage of a wide array of device capabilities. You'll also learn how to use embedded databases, such as SQLite and InterBase ToGo, synchronizing them with your own custom backend servers or modules using the powerful RAD Server engine. The book concludes by sharing tips for testing and deploying your end-to-end application suite for a smooth user experience.By the end of this book, you'll be able to deliver modern enterprise applications using Delphi confidently.What you will learn• Discover the latest enhancements in the Delphi IDE• Overcome the barriers that hold you back from embracing cross-platform development• Become fluent with FireMonkey controls, styles, LiveBindings, and 3D objects• Build Delphi packages to extend RAD Server or modularize your applications• Use FireDAC to get quick and direct access to any data• Leverage IoT technologies such as Bluetooth and Beacons and learn how to put your app on a Raspberry Pi• Enable remote apps with backend servers on Windows and Linux through REST APIs• Develop modules for IIS and Apache web serversWho this book is forThis book is for Delphi developers interested in expanding their skillset beyond Windows programming by creating professional-grade applications on multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and back-office servers. You'll also find this book useful if you're a developer looking to upgrade your knowledge of Delphi to keep up with the latest changes and enhancements in this powerful toolset. Some Delphi programming experience is necessary to make the most out of this book.

Section 1: Programming Power

This section introduces Delphi as a powerful programming tool for fully embracing cross-platform development, explains why it's so much more than just a legacy Windows compiler, and helps get you up to speed with the latest IDE and language enhancements that accelerate development and decrease the time to market. This foundational knowledge sets the stage for the rest of the book, helping you to navigate the IDE, write efficient code, drop to the command line if you need, and become familiar with new programming constructs.

This section comprises the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Recent IDE Enhancements
• Chapter 2, Delphi Project Management
• Chapter 3, A Modern-Day Language

Chapter 1: Recent IDE Enhancements

Delphi is not just a language, nor just an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), nor just a toolset or programming environment, but all of that and more. Starting in the early 1980s with Turbo Pascal shipping on a single floppy disk, it has grown to be a powerful suite of libraries, tools, connected services, and integrated components that support virtually every computing platform. And as with most technological tools, Delphi is constantly growing, improving, and adding features.

This first chapter will give you a quick recap of all that the IDE encompasses and what new features you may have missed in the last few versions. Some of these are just for convenience, such as quickly locating a unit in Windows Explorer, or jumping to a method with the navigation toolbar. There are visual improvements with high DPI support, a new dark mode, and structural highlighting options. You'll be more efficient with faster loading times, greatly improved Code Insight features, and editor tricks such as bookmark stacks. Finally, you will understand your code better with add-ons, such as Project Statistics and Toxicity Metrics.

You will read about all of these and more in the following sections of this chapter:

• Understanding the Delphi IDE
• Delphi 10 Seattle
• Delphi 10.1 Berlin
• Delphi 10.2 Tokyo
• Delphi 10.3 Rio
• Delphi 10.4 Sydney

Understanding the Delphi IDE

The idea of combining the editing, compiling, and managing of project files within one integrated programming application started way back in the 1970s, but didn't really catch on in the PC arena for quite some time. Borland Pascal, the pre-cursor to Delphi, pioneered many facets of an IDE in the creation of Disk Operating System (DOS) applications and took many of its features and user interface constructs with it to the Windows desktop.

At its core, an IDE needs to assist the developer in managing a software project's many moving parts: editing source code, crafting user interfaces, managing project parameters, compiling the application and resources, testing and debugging, and preparing a deployable application. These vary from language to language, so an IDE needs to understand the tools that it supports very well—and the developers who use it.

Delphi's IDE, like many other modern tools, has a rich code editor with syntax checking and color schemes, resizable window panes, structure and object views, data and source repository connections, and the ability to save various configurations for different needs. Here are the various windows and views you'll find in Delphi:

• Code Editor: The main focal point for writing code.
• Project Manager: Combine files necessary for compiling a project.
• Object Inspector: Access properties and events of components.
• Structure Pane: View and organize components hierarchically.
• Tool Palette: Component list.
• Message Window: Compilation output, search results, and more.
• To-Do List: Parsed TODO comments from the code are neatly displayed here.
• Templates: Macros for expanding frequently typed patterns of code.
• LiveBindings Designer: Visually build data connections between components.
• Class Explorer: Tree view of the classes in the current unit.
• Data Explorer: View data and manage connections from dbExpress or FireDAC sources without leaving the IDE.
• Model View: Manage object models of your data.
• Other Debugger views: Call Stack, watches, local variables, breakpoints, Threads, events, Modules, and CPU windows.

The following screenshot shows these windows and views in the Delphi IDE:

Figure 1.1 – The Delphi 10.4 Sydney IDE showing several available window panes

Let's look at some of these in a little more detail.

Like most popular code editors that developers use these days, there is color syntax highlighting, hotkeys for moving code around, bookmarks, class completion, and template expansion. There is a lot of keyboard backward-compatibility in Delphi (even dating back to the old WordStar days) but also a lot of customization to set up the key combinations that work best for you. Classes and methods can be folded (or "collapsed"), and you can create your own foldable regions. Error insight can alert you to syntactical errors in your code as you type.

The Project Manager can contain a single project or a group of projects, and there are buttons to manage aspects of them with ease—as a group or individually. You can determine where compiled objects will be placed, establish host applications to debug modules, and manage multiple platform configurations here. More on this will be covered in Chapter 2, Delphi Project Management.

The Object Inspector allows you to initialize properties and hook up events of components at design time to save you the trouble of having to write all that out in code. If you build custom components, you can publish your own properties and events, which will also show up here. Plus, you can register your own property editors to provide even greater functionality.

The Structure pane is a handy view of elements that changes depending on the context. When you're in the code editor, it shows the list of classes, methods, and used units in the current unit. When you're in the form designer, it shows a tree view of the components on the form that can be rearranged by dragging them with the mouse to a different place on the hierarchy (with some obvious parent-container restrictions; for example, a panel can contain a label, whereas a label cannot contain a panel). Double-clicking one of these elements takes you to that element.

When you're designing a form or data module, you can place items on it from the Tool Palette. This is also context-sensitive, thereby only listing the elements that can be placed on the current form. For example, only FireMonkey components will be available for a FireMonkey form; but database connection components can be placed on a VCL form, a FireMonkey form, or a data module.

When building a project or running other pro...