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

Chapter 6: All About LiveBindings

Windows VCL programmers have often used data-aware controls to link data sources with a user interface, reducing the amount of code they need to write. These data sources can be redirected or disabled, fields can be combined on-the-fly by setting properties or hooking into event handlers, and large datasets can be hooked up to powerful grids, enabling complex views with minimal work. Data-aware controls enable prototypes that can easily be turned into production applications.

FireMonkey's components do not come with data-aware controls, but we are not left to code everything ourselves. Right alongside this new GUI framework, another framework was introduced (in Delphi XE2) – one that used expressions to connect datasets to objects in a powerful and flexible way. It's called LiveBindings, and it's not limited to just FireMonkey controls – it works with VCL as well!

The binding expressions can be as simple as connecting...