I've been in Scotts Valley this week, little time for keep pushing out my Delphi demos and blog about them. However I wanted to use these 5 minutes at the airport to point out to a very nice blog post from David I on VCL enhancements in XE5, mostly included also in the professional version.

David I lists sensors support (great if you have a new Intel-based tablet with Windows 8) and gives an actual demo of how to use it. FireDAC is the most relevant library for all Delphi database developers, and even if in the Professional version you don't get the enterprise database connectivity, you can take advantage of some great features (starting with the powerful FDMemTable) and also buy it is a separate add on.

Next in the series is the new REST Client library I've blogged about. Notice how this can be used in mobile apps, but it is perfect fit to let your Delphi VCL apps talk with web services. See for example a simple VCL REST client application at blog.marcocantu.com/blog/source_code_vcl_rest_music_client.html. You can see some of the recent benefits at www.embarcadero.com/landing-pages/rad-xe2-to-rad-xe5.

From previous versions you also get features like visual live bindings and VCL styles. If you haven't upgraded to Delphi in a while you'll also gain full Unicode support (at the expense of having to migrate your code, I know) and 64 bit Windows support. And you can take advantage of the current offers that let you upgrade from older versions of Delphi www.embarcadero.com/radoffer.

Finally, let me also dispel a myth. That is, that the Delphi RTL is broken and slow since XE3. While there have been issues in that version (when the team refactored the RTL to make it cross-platform) the large mayoriy of the problems have been addressed, in the various intermediate versions and you'll get even more RTL fixes in a coming XE5 update. I'm not saying we cannot do more, and in fact a key goal of the product after shipping XE5 is to focus on quality, and put some more attention back to the VCL platform.

I blogged about a DataSnap mobile client in August and showed it at CodeRage and other conferences. The original blog post is at blog.marcocantu.com/blog/datasnap_android_clients.html and already included the image shown below. Now I've added the source code to my "Embarcadero Sessions Repository on code.marcocantu.com/. 

The demo shows how to execute a simple "reverse string" operation on the server and how to access a remote dataset (a local CDS file on the server), load it into a client memory table, and use live bindings to a ListView control (with grouping and a header). The actual client code has two lines visible at code.marcocantu.com/trac/marcocantu_delphi_sessions_demos/browser/datasnap/DataSnap101/DSMobileClientForm.pas#L45.

Refer to the project on the code repository for subversion access, or browse the source starting from the link above. 

PS. In other demos I'll post soon, I'll show how to use FireDAC on both client and server and how to use REST rather than the IAppServer / Provider interface as in this demo.

PS 2: How many mobile development tools let's you view live data at design time?

Another REST client demo that I wrote for recent conferences is a VCL client accessing to some music information, different than the demo I blogged about last week. The new demo, in fact, uses the same service but makes a different request, as you can see from the following REST client components settings:

object RESTClient1: TRESTClient
  BaseURL = 'http://api.discogs.com'
end

object RESTRequest1: TRESTRequest
  Client = RESTClient1
  Params = <
    item
      Kind = pkURLSEGMENT
      name = 'NAME'
      Options = [poAutoCreated]
      Value = 'Michael Jackson'
    end>
  Resource = 'artist/{NAME}'
  Response = RESTResponse1
end

As you can see, the URI ('artist/{NAME}') has an internal parameter, enclosed in curly braces, and this value automatically adds a proper parameter definition to the RESTRequest component. This parameter is of type URL segment. Rather than composing the URL manually, the core URL, the URI and the parameters are automatically combined by the REST client library into the actual HTTP request. To pass a specific value for the search, all you have to do is to replace the default value of the parameter:

procedure TForm4.btnJsonClick(Sender: TObject);
var
  rParam: TRESTRequestParameter;
  jValue: TJSONValue;
begin
  rParam := RESTRequest1.Params.ParameterByName('NAME');
  if Assigned (rParam) then
  begin
    rParam.Value := edName.Text;
    RESTRequest1.Execute;
    jValue := RESTResponse1.JSONValue;
    if jValue is TJSONObject then
      MemoOutput.Text := TJSONObject(jValue).GetValue('artist').ToString
    else
      MemoOutput.Text := jValue.ToString;
  end;
end;

Notice that the result is a JSON object I'm processing manually to extract the information I'm looking for. Here is the output of the program:

Again the complete source code is available on my "session demos" repository at code.marcocantu.com/trac/marcocantu_delphi_sessions_demos while the subversions URL for the entire set of demos is at code.marcocantu.com/svn_public/marcocantu_delphi_sessions_demos/. (And this time it should work, sorry for the subversions server misconfiguration when I wrote my previous blog post).

After too many days on the road, I've started publishing the source code of the demos I've shown at recent conferences. The first is an example of the use of the REST client library.

This is a demo I used for my CodeRage 8 session on the REST client library (the video is available) and uses the REST API behind the web site DiscoGS. The program is a very simple client that searches for albums with a given text in their title. Honestly, that's not the important part of the project. The application uses many different Delphi technologies, shortly covered in the following sections.

REST Client Library

The REST Client component has a BaseURL = 'http://api.discogs.com' while the REST Request component has an URI and a few parameters:

object RESTRequest1: TRESTRequest
  Client = RESTClient1
  Params = <
    item
      name = 'title'
      Value = 'Thriller'
    end
    item
      name = 'per_page'
      Value = '100'
    end
    item
      name = 'type'
      Value = 'master'
    end>
  Resource = 'database/search'
  Response = RESTResponse1
end

From JSON To FDMemTable

The program automatically maps the resulting JSON to a FireDAC in-memory table, whose metadata gets automatically filled:

object RESTResponseDataSetAdapter1: TRESTResponseDataSetAdapter
  Dataset = FDMemTable1
  FieldDefs = <>
  Response = RESTResponse1
end

Live Bindings (and DataModules)

The data is displayed in a ListView of a mobile Delphi application (I tested it on Android) using Visual Live Bindings. For better separation of data access and application logic and user interface, all of the non-visual components are in a data module (or "the model"), safe for those defining the live bindings, which are related to the user interface definition (or "the viewmodel" mapping). All of the code in the data module could be used in a VCL application or any other project.

Again notice how you can use the Live Binding Designer to connect the user interface controls with components on a data module (the system uses different colors, the brown boxes represents components in the data module, while the designer is open on the form):

The Final Application

The final application has the following output, here shown at design time (the ability to preview the actual user interface populated with data is a very relevant feature of Delphi):

Where is the Code?

You mean the Object Pascal source code? There is very little, as almost everything is configured visually. Here is all of it:

procedure THeaderFooterForm.btnGetClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
  DataModuleMusic.RESTRequest1.Params.ParameterByName('title').
    Value := edTitle.Text;
  DataModuleMusic.RESTRequest1.Execute;
  DataModuleMusic.FDMemTable1.Active := True;
end;

Getting the Code

After this long description, here is finally what I meant to write, which is how to get this code. I created a new public repository (read-only) based on Subversion. You can get the latest version of the code (which might be udpated over time) or just browse it online. The project will host many different examples, this is only the first one. The location of the entire project is:

http://code.marcocantu.com/trac/marcocantu_delphi_sessions_demos

While the Subversion URL is:

code.marcocantu.com/svn_public/marcocantu_delphi_sessions_demos (updated, was wrong in the original post)

To see the source code of this specific demo online you can refer to:

code.marcocantu.com/trac/marcocantu_delphi_sessions_demos/browser/restclient/MobileMusicClient

More Demos to Come

Hope to have time to add all of my recent demos to this repository in the coming weeks.

I wrote a simple utility to help manually working on styles from a StyleBook in XE4, the version for XE5 is now available on CodeCentral. The original blog post with the description of the problem and of the solution is at http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/couple_tips_xe4_fmx_styles.html.

The new CodeCentral submission is at cc.embarcadero.com/item/29623

There is a new survey meant for Delphi developers who still have applications build in old, pre-Unicode versions of Delphi (not specifically tow two mentioned in the title, but also Delphi 4, 5, 6, 2005, 2006, and so on). The idea behind the survey it to understand if we can do something more (or something different) to help developer migrate to newer versions of the product.

If you are part of this group of developers still using older versions (even if you also bought a newer one you are using for some of your projects), we'd appreciate your input. And if you know any other Delphi developers using older versions of Delphi and can send them the link to the survey, tweet, blog, or email about this initiative, thanks in advance.

The survey has 16 questions, mostly quite simple, and should take about 5 minutes to complete:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MF6RZMG

Update: There was a problem with the 8th question taht is now fixed. Sorry my bad for trying it out, but not trying to post my own answers. It was a multiple choice with cumpulsory answer, seems this doesn't work in SurveryMonkey.

It's about one year I started working for Embarcadero as Delphi Product Manager. It has been a very interesting experience for me. I spent time on many activities: from defining the specification of future product features to product evangelism and conference presentations, from development (not much, though) to customer meetings, from scrum meetings to R&D planning sessions, from preparing slides and documentation to logging and tracking issues in the product. As you can see, the job is quite varied, interesting, and quite challenging.

Working from remote (at a 9 hours time zone difference from other colleagues) has been a bit complex to master, but it can certainly be done. Good I share the same timezone with many in R&D and Q&A people, beside many of our international managers, evangelists, sales, and partners. I made 6 trips to our office in California, a good average but visited also several other Embarcadero offices in Europe. In terms of technologies I mostly was involved in the database area (including FireDAC and DataSnap), language and RTL, but also in the FM platform and the new operating systems we started supporting.

I spent a lot of time talking with actual developers, at conferences, customers meetings, "focus groups", trying to understand better what we are doing right and what we could do better, and reporting all of my findings to different groups within the company. Honestly, there are still many things I need to learn, given my past experience was more on the technical side of Delphi.

A couple of things I hope to be able to improve this second year: get back to blogging and communicating more, and get back to writing (in my free time). This has been an incredible year for Delphi (with the new mobile tools), and it was a honor and a pleasure to be so deeply involved in the product and to work with so many great developers and managers. Thanks.

The first update for Delphi XE5 and RAD Studio XE5, after the initial iOS7 hotfix, has been released today. It covers several different issues, but there is quite some focus on iOS7 support, FireDAC, ClientDataSet. Here are the relevant links:

• The download is in the registered users download page at cc.embarcadero.com/myreg. There is a patch version (270 MB), or an updated ISO (4.7 GB).
• The release notes include also a couple of fixes you can apply manually to XE5 (like the FIreDAC fodler fix). Read it with some care at docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE5/en/Release_Notes_for_XE5_Update_1
• The list of bug fixes is at edn.embarcadero.com/article/43468

It you have XE5, install this update. If you don't have it, now it is time to buy XE5 and take your Delphi code to Android.

Some more Delphi XE5 links you might have missed, mostly related to CodeRage 8 sessions (the great online conference we had last week):

• Jim "things learned from CodeRage" great blog post -- the base CodeRage 8 summary -- at delphi.org/2013/10/things-i-learned-from-delphi-coderage-8/
• Sarina on creating an overflow menu on Android at blogs.embarcadero.com/sarinadupont/2013/10/17/463
• David I eWeek interview part 1 (edn.embarcadero.com/article/43445) and part 1 (edn.embarcadero.com/article/43446)
• Brian Long CodeRage sessions files at blog.blong.com/2013/10/my-coderage-session-files.html
• Jim on Wireless Android debugging at delphi.org/2013/10/wireless-android-debugging-with-delphi-xe5
• David I ZendConf keynote (gadgets heaven) on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch

That's it for now.

In the next month, I'll give keynotes and other sessions at quite a few Delphi European conferences. This is a short summary:

• DAPUG (Denmark) is a Danish user group that organizes great events. I was there already once a few years back. This time I'm co-hosting the session with my friend Cary Jensen. The event is October 22nd and 23rd (that is, it starts tomorrow). For information, www.dapug.dk/. There is also a special "meet the Delphi product manager" event at the end of the session.
   
• EKON 17 (Germany) is a German conference that has been around since the early days of Delphi and I've spoken to in the past. This year event is in Köln in November 4th to 6th. Information at entwickler-konferenz.de/. There is a great group of well-known Delphi speakers, including Cary, Nick, Ray, and Jeroen. Plus several German speakers. Sessions are in both the native language and English.
   
• ITDevCon (Italy) is an Italian event, at its 5th year. On November 14th and 15th in Verona, with several international speakers, plus a good number if Italian ones. Sessions are in either languages, as well. Information at www.itdevcon.it/.
   
• Be-Delphi (Belgium) is a one day conference, with Brian, Bob, Bruno, Ray and many others. I was there last year and enjoyed it a lot. This is is on November 21st and the site is www.be-delphi.com/.

As you can see from the list above, there are quite a few US speakers who'll spend quite some time in Europe next month, and some of us Europeans will travel a bit. If you are attending any of these events feel free to stop by, I'm interesting in listening to your success stories as well as your complains. I regularly have sessions with my US colleagues reporting back the feedback from the "road".

Finally, I'll present Delphi XE5 session in Rome on October 30th and in Luxembourg on November 20th.

As you see, I'll be on the road a lot (I'm actually at an airport right now). See you at one of these events if you can attend.