Dimensional Data

In this article, we start from a TWebResponsiveGrid and use it to demonstrate various tricks that apply throughout the TMS WEB Core framework but are here in combination with the TWebResponsiveGrid perfect to show. The purpose of the article is to show how well the web HTML/CSS world blends with the Delphi developers components world and this in different & flexible ways. We will show you a couple of techniques to customize TWebResponsiveGrid items and make these interactive. TWebResponsiveGrid intro TWebResponsiveGrid is a responsive grid control. This means that it contains a number of items displayed in a 2D grid layout and this layout, i.e. number of columns will be controlled by the device screen size. This number of columns is determined by the setting TWebResponsiveGrid.Options.ItemMinWidth. This sets the minimum width of items in pixels. So, the grid will automatically show as much columns as allowed to still have this minimum width of items respected. And this also takes the TWebResponsiveGrid.Options.ItemGap in account that specifies the gap between items also in number of pixels. Other than this, there is not much to do. When the TWebResponsiveGrid is resized or displayed on a big or small screen, it will use these settings to automatically render the right number of columns for items. To see this directly live, you can also visit this online demo An item can be displayed in normal state, hover state and selected state. Therefore TWebResponsiveGrid.Options has settings for normal state, selected state and hover state colors. In addition or as alternative to setting colors (and other settings) for items, CSS can be used. TWebResponsiveGrid.Options.ItemClassName is the name of the CSS class that can be assigned to the item (outer HTML element of the item is a DIV). Beyond simple HTML in items The items one can add in a TWebResponsiveGrid are of the type TWebResponsiveGridItem and have a property HTML: string to set the HTML the item should contain and the generic Tag property. When the TWebResponsiveGrid.Options.ItemTemplate is set, this is preset for the item HTML when a new item is added. Note that when loading data from JSON or a dataset, the template can hold specifiers (%SPECIFIER%) and this is merged at runtime with hthe JSON attribute or dataset record field. The purpose of this article though is on programmatically filling the items collection. The initial code to fill the TWebResponsiveGrid as such is: for i := 0 to 20 do begin WebResponsiveGrid1.Items.Add.HTML := ‘Grid item ‘+i.ToString+’OK>/button>’; end; This shows how we have added some text and a button to a responsive grid item. The result is very simple. It does not look nice but the responsive behavior is there. The TWebResponsiveGrid is set to top aligned and when resizing the browser, the items automatically flow in the container. Before diving into making the HTML button react, let’s visually enhance the responsive grid items. We do this with some CSS for the TWebResponsiveGrid as well as the TWebResponsiveGridItem. While we could add the CSS style in the HTML file associated with the form or application (which is probably the best place), we wanted to take the opportunity here to introduce the TWebForm.AddCSS() method that allows to dynamically insert CSS at runtime (or remove it later and replace it). Doing so is simple as demonstrated with this […]

Intro In April, we released the first version of TMS FNC Maps. Now 4.5 months later we have released v1.1 with exciting new features and improvements. TTMSFNCDirections: TravelMode tmPublicTransport, tmTruck added (for supported services) TTMSFNCDirections: GetDirections result Status and ErrorMessage added LoadGPXFromFile/LoadGPXFromStream/LoadGPXFromText now also supports elevation and timestamp data Events OnCreateGPXTrack, OnCreateGPXSegment for creating your own data structure when parsing GPX files TTMSFNCGoogleMaps: Clusters.Text property TTMSFNCGeoCoding: Get(Reverse)Geocoding result Status and ErrorMessage added Internally, a lot of smaller improvements have been made in combination with the existing supported services, TMS FNC Core and TTMSFNCWebBrowser. Edge Chromium Last week we also announced Edge Chromium Stable support for TAdvWebBrowser. We can now also announce that the TTMSFNCWebBrowser has been synchronized and offers Edge Chromium stable support. More details on how to install Edge Chromium can be found here. TMS FNC Maps Book TMS FNC Maps offers a demo and documentation to get you started, but if you really want to energize your developments the TMS FNC Maps Book is a must have! Stay tuned for more! TMS FNC Maps 1.2 is already around the corner with more exciting new features, so stay tuned and keep an eye on this blog .

We look forward to connect with you at the upcoming conference! TMS evangelist Holger Flick and many other experts will share their knowledge with the audience! Take your Desktop UI/UX to new levels as you learn from industry leaders alongside over 1000 developers like you! The Theory and Practice of Amazing Desktop Application UI & UX Is a FREE online event, organized by Embarcadero technologies, on Sept 16th & 17th, 2020. The full schedule can be found on the following page https://summit.desktopfirst.com/schedule/ Speakers https://summit.desktopfirst.com/speakers/ The speakers will be sharing their experiences, strategies, and knowledge. You can choose between multiple speakers and categories. TMS evangelist Holger Flick “Building consistent UI suitable for high DPI with vector images and styles” Since 1996, Dr. Holger Flick has been using Delphi as his primary development platform and has been an active member of the community. He studied computer science at Dortmund University and later wrote his dissertation at the Ruhr University in Bochum in the field of telemedicine. For his passion for and knowledge of Delphi he was awarded the “Delphi MVP” moniker in 2016. In 2019, Holger moved to the United States of America (USA) and established his new company FlixEngineering LLC. The company focuses on consulting, training and software development using object-oriented programming languages like Delphi, C#, Swift, and Objective-C. Holger is part of the TMS Software family providing his expertise as Evangelist and QA Engineer. Holger Flick has written multiple book on TMS software: Participants can choose from multiple categories depending on their interest: https://summit.desktopfirst.com/topics/ Book your tickets today and reserve your seat: book now

The first version of TMS WEB Core for Visual Studio Code v1.0 has been released! Visual Studio Code is the 3rd IDE that can host the TMS WEB Core framework for web client application development after the earlier released versions for Delphi and Lazarus. TMS WEB Core offers Object Pascal software developers visual RAD component-based web client development with the strongly typed and object-oriented Pascal language. For developers who are not yet used to Visual Studio Code, this is a completely new world. That’s why here is a starting guide, with all the information you need to get started! Get started with TMS WEB Core for Visual Studio Code TMS videos Videos: José Leon Serna (chief architect) YouTube channel Blog articles Books Online courses With version 1.0 the first step has been taken and further developments are being made to expand this into a very productive and rich platform. TMS WEB Core for Visual Studio Code is now available at our special launch price starting from 295EUR for a single developer license! And you can also download and explore this new ground-breaking product using the trial version! Follow us on social media and don’t miss our blogs!

This year in February, we launched TMS VCL UI Pack Academic. In April, we launched TMS FNC UI Pack Academic. And now in September, we launch TMS WEB Core Academic! TMS Academic program With TMS VCL UI Pack Academic, we want to inspire and motivate students and teachers to learn about the power of the Delphi VCL framework and help users to build even more powerful, visually pleasing, and feature rich Windows desktop applications. With TMS FNC UI Pack Academic, we want to do the same for FMX cross platform applications. Empower students and teachers to discover the fascinating world of cross platform development with Delphi and the FireMonkey framework. TMS FNC UI Pack delivers over 70 extra sophisticated cross platform/cross framework visual controls to enrich native applications created with Delphi for Windows, iOS, macOS and Android. And now, with the third step, we want to motivate students and teachers to discover that Delphi can also be an extremely productive tool for web client application development. TMS WEB Core Academic TMS WEB Core , offers RAD component based visual development of web applications driven by the strongly typed and object-oriented Object Pascal language from the familiar and beloved Delphi IDE. It is clear that with the first three academic editions of our popular products, we hope students will enjoy picking up Delphi and experience how powerful it is and how it makes software development fun at the same time. With that, we want to offer our contribution to nurture the next generation of enthusiast and passionate Delphi developers. As all our other academic releases, it is designed for use with the latest and greatest Delphi version, now v10.4.x Sydney. In order to obtain the academic licensed version of TMS WEB Core, students and teachers need to provide an academic email address and their school or university information. In addition to the fully functional academic version of TMS WEB Core, there is plenty of information to learn about TMS WEB Core and to get started. Getting started Manual: TMS WEB Core Developers Guide Demos: TMS WEB Core demos Videos: TMS WEB Core videos Books: TMS WEB Core: Web Application Development with Delphi Training class: courses.landgraf.dev Next level: And for those students who want to rise to the next level, there is the TMS WEB Core partner program! Develop your own components or Object Pascal interfaces to existing JavaScript libraries and publish these via the TMS WEB Core partner program. Contributing partners will get the regular TMS WEB Core version with a license that permits to use it with Delphi IDEs XE7 to 10.4 including Lazarus on Windows, macOS, and Linux but also with our brand new TMS WEB Core for Visual Studio Code that can be used also from all three major desktop operating systems. It speaks for itself that we are enthusiastic to see students and teachers “go web” and we are more than curious to see what exciting, new, and innovative solutions will surface. With all that, you will move your career forward, move Delphi forward, and move TMS WEB Core forward! Request the academic license now! Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Take the moment and make it perfect. Request your academic license here: https://www.tmssoftware.com/academic

Create documentation is boring. At least that’s my opinion, and most developers I know also don’t like to write it. But that’s something we need to do, of course. Thus, the easiest it gets to document things, the better. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash With TMS XData, you create your REST API server using Delphi very easily, but you also get it documented almost automatically using the automatic Swagger generation feature. Since all endpoints are strong typed in server, all it takes is just to enable a single property and have your endpoints listed and testable. This feature has been available for years already. But now XData takes it to another level. A good (if not the best) way to document your source code is to use XML Documentation Comments. In the interfaces and methods that build your service contract, you can simply add specific XML tags and content, like this: /// /// Retrieves the sine (sin) of an angle /// /// /// Returns the Sine (Sin) value of an angle radians value. /// The value returned will be between -1 and 1. /// If the angle is zero, the returned value will be zero. /// /// /// The angle in radians. /// function Sin(Angle: Double): Double; And Delphi IDE will automatically use it for Help Insight , showing you information about the method on-the-fly. For example, if some developer is trying to use the Sin method of your API, information will be conveniently displayed: The good news is that, with XData, you can use such XML comments in the Swagger document and Swagger-UI that are generated automatically by XData, improving even more your REST API documentation. Since the API endpoints are generated directly from the interfaced and methods, XData knows exactly the meaning of each documentation and can map it accordingly to Swagger. By asking Delphi to generate the XML documentation files, and using a single line of code like this: uses {…}, XData.Aurelius.ModelBuilder; … TXDataModelBuilder.LoadXmlDoc(XDataServer.Model); XData will reuse the documentation and include it in Swagger: Using different documentation for Help Insight and Swagger Reusing the same XML comments is nice as you don’t repeat yourself. Document your code just once, and the same documentation is used for documenting your Delphi interfaces (Delphi developments) and your REST API (API consumer development). But, if for some reason you want to use different documentation content for Delphi developers and for REST API users, that’s also possible. For example, suppose the following documentation: Note that tags summary and param are the regular XML documentation tags. They will be used for Help Insight: And swagger tags with no name attribute (A), or name param-A (B), param-B (C) and remarks (D) will be used exclusively for Swagger documentation: Customizing tags You can also customize the tags in Swagger. Endpoints are grouped together inside a tag, which can have a name and description. By default, the name of the tag will be path segment of the interface service. But you can change it using either swagger tag using tag-name attribute. The description of the tag by default is empty, but you can define it using the regular summary tag, or optionally using the swagger tag with tag-description attribute. Consider the following documentation for both IArithmenticService and ITrigonometryService : The above tags will generate the […]