Dimensional Data

The goal of this tutorial is to describe the Delphi development ecosystem. It can be helpful for someone coming to Delphi from another programming language. Delphi is really easy to learn – the programming language syntax can be learned in hours. Pascal, from which Delphi’s Object Pascal language has evolved, has long been a very popular language in colleges and education for teaching the basic concepts of software development. Knowing the fundamentals of programming is a crucial part of programming. But there lies a whole ecosystem of terminology and techniques. It is always overwhelming for someone coming from a different background in technology. The other trouble is that there are so many different Delphi components, examples and libraries available and it can be quite daunting to decide which ones are the best for any given purpose. You’re spoilt for choice and sometimes too much choice can bring its own headaches. So to try and ease this small learning curve this article brings together a list of some of the most popular tools, libraries, best practices in Delphi. You may find more interesting demonstrations, tips, and tricks on our blog. How to start Delphi development? The first thing to do is to download Delphi from www.embarcadero.com. You can find the latest Delphi 10.4.2 Community Edition which is free for everyone. Be sure to install Delphi IDE with samples and help files that might come for help sometime in the future. How to work with Delphi programs in another code editor like VS Code? There is an official extension for Embarcadero Delphi in VS Code marketplace which provides you to work with the Delphi code in VS Code smoothly. Note that you need an active license (paid or trial) for Delphi 11 in order to use the DelphiLSP VS Code add-on. It will not work with the community edition. Yo use the DelphiLSP VS Code Add-In you just need to have the latest version of Embarcadero Delphi installed on your machine and generate an LSP config file. How to write readable and maintainable code in Delphi? Embarcadero Delphi compilers ignore any whitespace and allow for a lot of flexibility for writing code. But for the readability and maintainability purpose of the source code, Embarcadero has defined the style guide for Delphi’s Object Pascal. I recommend you to check out and learn how to write beautiful code with Object Pascal – or at least code that others find fits in with the generally accepted layout styling which is important if you work with a team or contribute to an Open Source project. How to format Delphi source code? Every developer writes code in their style. Since the Embarcadero compilers ignore any whitespace in which you can write the same code in hundreds of different ways, this can lead to unreadable source code. We can prevent this by applying default source code formatting or generate our formatting config file. While coding in the Code Editor, you can apply the Format Source context menu command to format the source code. Moreover, you can define your custom formatting style and save it to a config file. Then other team members can also utilize the same formatting style to make the source code maintainable. Check out the official documentation to learn more about this. Does Delphi have a package manager? If you have been […]

As I hope you’re aware by now – RAD Studio 11 Alexandria is now available! RAD Studio 11 contains a whole ton of features and it’s launching just ahead of Microsoft’s official release of the beautifully redesigned Windows 11. We wrote about the many great things contained in Windows 11 here on the blog before and how behind that gorgeously aesthetic user interface are a few traps and pitfalls which may be a problem for older legacy apps and hardware. Source: Microsoft One of the most obvious user interface changes is the fact that almost all app windows and many user interface controls will get a rounded corner effect applied to them. The amount of rounding of the application’s forms and things like text boxes, panels and group boxes will vary. Microsoft go into a lot more detail on how it will affect user interface components here in this article. They also have an article, here, which describes how the rounding of the application forms occurs and also how to turn that rounding feature on or off. Microsoft recognizes that some app windows are not going to work very well with rounding applied to the caption bar – for example tool window type application frames which typically have a very narrow height and custom-drawn window icons. Thinking ahead, Windows 11 provides a fairly easy to use Windows API which allows you full control over that rounding behavior – to turn it off, on, or ask Windows 11 to round the windows with a smaller radius. ‘Small’ Windows 11 Rounding Normal Windows 11 rounding The question came up during the RAD Studio 11 launch Q & A whether the Embarcadero team had an example of using that API. David (or Marco, it wasn’t clear) pasted a short example of how to do it in the question window but it was a little hard to read and only a partial example so I’ve taken that answer and built a more complete demo for you to download and play with. Just for fun it also shows Windows notifications using the TNotificationCenter component because if we’re going to be modern we might as well embrace a few of the other cool modern Windows things Delphi makes very easy. 😋 RAD Studio 11 Delphi example rounded corners app running on Windows 11 On versions of Windows before Windows 11 the API call will have no effect and your app Windows will still look the same. On Windows 11 the example app controls the main form Window based on your choices from a radio group. I’ve created a universal unit with a simple call in there – all you need to do is pass it a Window handle and Windows 11 will do your bidding. RAD Studio 11 is High DPI aware – so my screenshots look better now too! The example app is written in the new RAD Studio 11 Alexandria, of course, but it should work on earlier versions of Delphi. To use the code in your own apps simply download the source repository from the GitHub link below and include the “delphi_rounded_corners.pas” unit in your apps and make the procedure call. You can download the full source for the example RAD Studio 11 Delphi example application from here: https://github.com/checkdigits/rounded_corners RAD Studio 11 Alexandria […]

Delphi is technically a development environment powered by and for the Object Pascal programming language along with a suite of tools to enable high productivity and rapid application development. The ideas of the first version of Delphi originally began to emerge from Borland’s Turbo Pascal. However, it was decided that the object-oriented extensions that had been added to the Pascal language up to that point in time were not ideal, so the development team effectively started fresh and derived the language inspired by a broad number of ideas including those from Apple’s Object Pascal.  What is the killer feature of Delphi? Ultimately the drag and drop visual development of Delphi quickly demonstrated that such a visual approach was able to promote rapid visual app development for the users. Now, more than twenty five years on from those auspicious beginning, with hundreds of built-in visual and non-visual components, developers can rapidly design a master responsive UI layout once, then easily customize platform and device-specific views without redesigning the whole UI. This encapsulation of functionality into reusable components allowed for a low demand for actual writing code. Developers could – and still can – produce wholly, or mostly, complete applications with little or no code. It was, quite literally one of the original low code platforms. What do we mean by RAD Studio Delphi is a low code platform? If you would choose to create data-aware business applications, you can use enterprise-grade database components and a LiveBindings Designer to connect UI controls to data in a graphical high-level design way. The Live Binding mechanism is based on the observer model. It is built into the component library and gives access to any control that has a property that is able to interact with the live binding mechanism. This gives you, the developer, high productivity and a lightning-fast data-aware business application in seconds. Many business owners and app developers select Delphi because of being able to build stable products fast. The integration of Win32 API into Delphi’s Visual Component Library and its completeness gives a great environment on which to build native Windows programs. We can easily say that Delphi VCL is the number one library for building high-performance and native programs for Windows. Are Delphi applications really faster than other programs? To point out that speed is much better than most of the programming languages in the market. Delphi wins easily on speed because it compiles to native code which has a faster execution speed and much more rapid application startup. Where is Delphi used? Be sure to find out and learn about success stories by industries on the Embarcadero success stories web page. You can find thousands of businesses running with the power of Delphi and the Visual Component Library or FireMonkey framework behind them.           Health and Science Geology Retail Manufacturing Security Entertainment Transportation and more One thing that every business owner pointed out was the “Faster time to market for new product development” as the key to success. Are there a lot of programs still written in Delphi? Similarly, you can see and learn about hundreds of the latest mobile, desktop, web solution that made with Delphi. You can see beautifully designed and engineered applications that show the power of Delphi with VCL and cross-platform FMX framework […]

Wouldn’t it be nice to enhance your app with automatic language detection support for 173 languages? The Languagelayer is a simple and powerful REST API built to efficiently match text of any length to its corresponding language, cross-referencing single words, expressions and grammatical constructions, as well as taking into account any existing accents, dialects and other linguistic deviations. In this article we will see how fast and easy it is to use RAD Studio and Delphi to create a FireMonkey multidevice application using the LowCode Wizard in addition to a REST client library to take advantage of LanguageLayer API API and retrieve a JSON format response for automate language detection in real-time. Our RAD Studio and Delphi applications will be able to call the API and request information based on the name of parameters you provide. How do I set up the LanguageLayer API? Make sure you refer to LanguageLayer API website (https://LanguageLayer.com/) and and sign up for the free Plan (20 Requests/minute) providing only your email and some basic information (no credit card required). Once you are in the website will redirect you to a Quickstart guide dashboard and your API Access Key will be provided. The Access Key unique, personal and is required to authenticate with the API. Keep it safe! How do I call LanguageLayer API endpoints? Now all we need to do is to call the API base URL (http://api.languageLayer.com/) via a HTTP POST method with no JSON request body needed and some few requested parameters added to the URL address depending on the endpoint we choose to call. One can do that using REST Client libraries available on several programming languages. languageLayer offers one API endpoints to choose from: Detect: Will return information regarding the language of the query passed as parameter For a complete and detailed list of endpoints and its parameters make sure you refer to LanguageLayer Quickstart guide (https://languageLayer.com/quickstart) http://api.languageLayer.com/detect ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY & query = I%20like%20apples%20%26%20oranges. // more parameters available please refer to the API Documentation (https://languageLayer.com/documentation) http://api.languageLayer.com/detect ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY & query = I%20like%20apples%20%26%20oranges. // more parameters available please refer to the API Documentation (https://languageLayer.com/documentation) What does the LanguageLayer API endpoint return? After the call the main results will be as shown below. The languageLayer API’s live endpoint is used to get the latest rates for all available or a specific set of currencies. URL encoding is required in order to send the query text this means that a text like “I like apples & oranges.” should be passed as “I%20like%20apples%20%26%20oranges.”. { “success”: true, “results”: [{ “language_code”: “en”, “language_name”: “English”, “probability”: 83.896703655741, “percentage”: 100, “reliable_result”: true }]} { “success”: true, “results”: [{ “language_code”: “en”, “language_name”: “English”, “probability”: 83.896703655741, “percentage”: 100, “reliable_result”: true }]} How do I connect my applications to LanguageLayer API? Once you have followed basic steps to set up the LanguageLayer API we need to make sure we are able to connect and communicate with it before we start writing some code. RAD Studio Delphi and C++Builder make it very easy to connect to APIs as you can you REST Debugger to automatically create the REST components and paste them into your app. In Delphi all the job is done using 3 components tot make the API call. They are the TRESTClient, TRESTRequest, and TRESTResponse. Once […]

Hello. This article is part of a series where we speak with professional software developers, ask them what it’s like to write code for a living, and perhaps gain a few insights into the software development industry along the way. Today we’re heading out to the simply gorgeous country of Denmark to talk to Embarcadero MVP Glenn Dufke. Glenn can often be found fearlessly challenging preconceptions people have of Delphi by expounding the benefits of the language and the way it can solve everyone’s problems. If I wasn’t already a champion of Delphi myself I think Glenn could single-handedly change my mind and get me coding with it! You’ll bump into Glenn at various online events like TCoffeeAndCode as well as infosec forums and an impressive array of other locations. Glenn, thanks for taking part in the interviews 😊 Thanks for inviting me – I’ve been overloaded with work, sorry it took a while! What would be your brief evening news summary of who you are and what you do? I run my own consulting company GlennKonnetk where I provide services in the realm of software development, electronics design for embedded solutions and industrial automation. Which Embarcadero product(s) do you use a) the most b) regularly? Delphi is what I use the most during the day for the things I’m working on. How and/or why did you become a developer? Besides writing software, I also design electronics for embedded and industrial automation setups. I wanted to know how to get things “to work” by being able to write the software too. The challenges are fun and there are many things to think about, plus both knowing the hardware and software part makes it easier to account for the details that makes all the difference in the end. Glenn, hard at work capturing the hearts and minds of developers Do you think you will ever stop being a developer? If so, what would be next? No, I don’t. it is an ever changing field and a lot is constantly happening. However, if I were to switch to something else, that would probably stating a little burger joint, serving the best home made burgers you can get. What made you start using Delphi/C++ Builder? It was kind of a coincidence. When I initially got into a bit of programming, before I had a much clearer understanding of what it was all about, happened on the Commodore 64 with BASIC (Actually Microsoft BASIC 2.0 which Commodore licensed) when I was around 7 years old. Around 9, I tried HiSoft Pascal on the Amiga 500 I inherited from my gramps. Still I didn’t fully get far since I didn’t have manuals or anything to guide me. When I became a bit older, around 11, I was so intrigued about what made a PC work and how did software get into the machine to make it work. Fortunately one of my brother’s friends had just graduated a computer science program where they were taught Delphi (around 2001) and he got me a copy of the trial version of Delphi 6, not long after I was gifted with a copy of Delphi 7 Enterprise. Since we didn’t have any internet at home at the time (56k were common, ISDN for those who could afford and ADSL […]

In the last few years, companies are increasingly seeking the most cost-effective ways to optimize the way they make powerful applications. Cost-effective demands high productivity and a fast app development environment. Moreover, creating Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux applications within a single code base is helpful to get into the market in the shortest possible time and target a potential audience of millions of users. The Delphi programming language and FireMonkey native and cross-platform framework is absolutely designed to make this kind of thing happen. We never forget, the “RAD” in “RAD Studio” is an acronym for “rapid application development” and always has been. If you have spent time looking through cross-platform development tools, most of them are mobile-centric and do not target desktop audiences. For enterprises, being able to target both mobile and desktop environments is like taking control over everything. But, everything comes with ups and downs. Designing for a mobile framework which is then reused to create a desktop app often results in applications which do not behave like a real native app for the desktop. If we look closer, the fundamental problem is that the native UI controls behave differently depending on which platform they is hosting them. Things that work quite naturally on a mobile platform, such a slide or three-finger swipe, might work with a double-click, right-click or even key combination on the desktop. If you’ve designed your interface mobile-first and focusing on the slide/swipe interaction it’s going to look very broken or act awkwardly when it translates into the desktop click/right-click/keypress user interface interactivity metaphor. Cross-Platform Tools A substantial number of programmers start with web development and, typically, those developers know JavaScript. So, using web technologies to create cross-platform applications is naturally much easier for web developers. Sometimes it is also better for companies that they do not need time to teach other technologies to get into the mobile market. But, FireMonkey (FMX) is by far one of the best “Write Once, Deploy Everywhere” software development systems on the market. The impressive architecture of the framework is leading success stories and businesses around the globe. FireMonkey can tap into the GPU to deal with user interface and work with 3D graphics. The 3D graphics of FMX are built into its very core, that is why all visual components can be used in the 3D space. Moreover, it can also get into the underlying operating system so that you can achieve high performance and platform look and feel. Furthermore, one of the best features of the FMX is that it is easy to access underlying operating system features and device functionalities through just interfaces. The high level of abstractions in the FMX framework provides fast accessibility for developers. To put it in a nutshell, Delphi and C++ Builder with FireMonkey allows you to have a single codebase and yet compile for all the major platforms in seconds. FMX is not limited to mobile and desktop platforms, it offers a wide range of support for IoT, Embedded development and also works with smartwatches. How to create a fully functional native cross-platform app in under 30 seconds with a low-code experience? FireMonkey App Low-Code Wizard – is a tool to create a new fully-functional Delphi mobile application with multiple screens using the Low Code Wizard. Once […]

Wouldn’t it be nice to have real-time and historical currency information for your business and be able to instantly retrieve up-to-date exchange rate data for more than 168 world currencies? The currencylayer API is capable of delivering accurate exchange rate with data updates ranging from every 60 minutes down to stunning 60 seconds. In this article we will see how fast and easy it is to use RAD Studio and Delphi to create a Firemonkey multidevice application using the LowCode Wizard in addition to a REST client library to take advantage of currencylayer API API and retrieve a JSON format response for currency exchange rates in real-time. Our RAD Studio and Delphi applications will be able to call the API and request information based on the name of parameters you provide. How do I set up the Currencylayer API? Make sure you refer to Currencylayer API website (https://Currencylayer.com/) and sign up for the free Plan providing only your email and some basic information (no credit card required). Once you are in the website will redirect you to a Quickstart guide dashboard and your API Access Key will be provided. The Access Key unique, personal and is required to authenticate with the API. Keep it safe! How do I call Currencylayer API endpoints? Now all we need to do is to call the API base URL (http://api.currencylayer.com/) via a HTTP POST method with no JSON request body needed and some few requested parameters added to the URL address depending on the endpoint we choose to call. One can do that using REST Client libraries available on several programming languages. Currencylayer offers five API endpoints to choose from live endpoint: request the most recent exchange rate data historical endpoint: request historical rates for a specific day convert endpoint: convert any amount from one currency to another using real-time exchange rates timeframe endpoint: request exchange rates for a specific period of time change endpoint: request any currency’s change parameters (margin and percentage), optionally between two specified dates Our demo will focus on the Live Endpoint but all the others follow similar logic but with different parameters passed. For a complete and detailed list of endpoints and its parameters make sure you refer to Currencylayer Quickstart guide (https://currencylayer.com/quickstart) http://api.currencylayer.com/live ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY & source = GBP & currencies = USD,AUD,CAD,PLN,MXN & format = 1 // more parameters available please refer to the API Documentation (https://currencylayer.com/documentation) http://api.currencylayer.com/live ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY & source = GBP & currencies = USD,AUD,CAD,PLN,MXN & format = 1 // more parameters available please refer to the API Documentation (https://currencylayer.com/documentation) What does the Currencylayer API endpoint return? After the call the main results will be as shown below. The currencylayer API’s live endpoint is used to get the latest rates for all available or a specific set of currencies. { “success”: true, “terms”: “https://currencylayer.com/terms”, “privacy”: “https://currencylayer.com/privacy”, “timestamp”: 1630324396, “source”: “USD”, “quotes”: { “USDUSD”: 1, “USDAUD”: 1.370567, “USDCAD”: 1.260385, “USDPLN”: 3.87164, “USDMXN”: 20.2166 } { “success”: true, “terms”: “https://currencylayer.com/terms”, “privacy”: “https://currencylayer.com/privacy”, “timestamp”: 1630324396, “source”: “USD”, “quotes”: { “USDUSD”: 1, “USDAUD”: 1.370567, “USDCAD”: 1.260385, “USDPLN”: 3.87164, “USDMXN”: 20.2166 } How do I connect my Delphi applications to Currencylayer API? Once you have followed basic steps to set up the Currencylayer API we need to make sure we are able to connect and […]