Book Image

Fearless Cross-Platform Development with Delphi

By : David Cornelius
Book Image

Fearless Cross-Platform Development with Delphi

By: David Cornelius

Overview of this book

Delphi 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.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Programming Power
5
Section 2: Cross-Platform Power
11
Section 3: Mobile Power
15
Section 4: Server Power

Utilizing beacons

The previous section introduced the GATT profile as a way for Bluetooth LE devices to communicate once connected. But BLE devices can also send data without being connected by using the Generic Access Profile (GAP) in "advertising" mode. In this mode, data is sent out in specially formatted data packets on a periodic basis, thus acting as a beacon for any device that is listening.

There are currently three general beacon formats:

  • iBeacon: Apple was the first to create a beacon format; it is simple and robust.
  • AltBeacon: This open format, created by Radius Networks, is very similar to iBeacon but has a little more data available and is not company-specific.
  • EddyStone: Google created this open source, cross-platform format that defines different types of frames for a variety of applications; it is part of their Physical Web initiative.

To use beacons in your Delphi app, you may be thinking that you have to learn about the underlying...