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

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Back in the form unit, uCardPanel.pas, it starts with the unit keyword and has both an interface and implementation section, each with a uses clause."

A block of code is set as follows:

procedure TfrmPeopleList.lbPeopleClick(Sender: TObject);
var
  APerson: TPerson;
begin
  if lbPeople.ItemIndex > -1 then begin
    APerson := lbPeople.Items.Objects[lbPeople.ItemIndex] 
                  as TPerson;
    lblPersonName.Caption := APerson.FirstName + ' ' + 
                             APerson.LastName;
    lblPersonDOB.Caption  := FormatDateTime('yyyy-mm-dd',
                                 APerson.DateOfBirth);
  end;
end;

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

constructor TfrmPeopleList.TPerson.Create(
                       NewFN, NewLN string; NewDOB: TDate);
begin
  FFirstName := NewFN;
  FLastName  := NewLN;
  FDateOfBirth := NewDOB;
end;

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example:

"Under the Develop section of Delphi's default Welcome page, click the Open a sample project… link and drill down through the Object Pascal, VCL, and CardPanel folders, and then open the CardPanel project."

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.