REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

December 2, 2009

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

The white paper on "REST in Delphi 2010" I wrote for Embarcadero Technologies has been published, along with its 5 companion videos and the source code of the examples.

The white paper on "REST in Delphi 2010" I wrote for Embarcadero Technologies has been published, along with its 5 companion videos and the source code of the examples. To download the 50+ pages white paper and companion source code, you have to fill in the form at: http://www.embarcadero-info.com/in_action/radstudio/rest.html

This is the second white paper after the one written by Bob Swart on DataSnap in Delphi 2010. In the introduction of my paper I introduce REST ("The Concepts Behind Representational State Transfer") and cover "REST technologies and Delphi". The first technical part in on "REST Clients Written in Delphi" and includes sections on:

- A REST Client for RSS Feeds
- Of Maps and Locations
- Twitter, As Simple as it Could Be
- Interfacing with Google Spreadsheet Services

This part covers more or less the same Delphi REST Clients I published on http://ajax.marcocantu.com/delphirest, providing many implementation details and including the client for the Google Spreadsheet API. The second technical part covers "REST Servers in Delphi 2010" and specifically:

- Returning Objects and Updating Them
- Data-Oriented REST Servers

The server side development material is focused exclusively on the REST support offered by DataSnap in Delphi 2010 and based on JSON. I show how to build jQuery clients for these Delphi compiled servers.

It was a very interesting experience to write this material, which will also be part of my coming Delphi 2010 Handbook (watch for an announcement about the book in the next few days). The companion videos are also nice, but I'll link those and comment on their development in a couple of blog posts, probably tomorrow. Stay tuned.

posted by marcocantu @ 11:18PM | 8 Comments [0 Pending]

8 Comments

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

The more I look at REST, the less I like it. Its URL-
centricity and parameters use is really awful - and 
is very far away from OO designs. URL are nice when 
writing demos, I guess complex applications may 
become a nightmare when resources are referenced by 
long, complex strings that can be easily mistyped 
without any check.
And while HTTP can transport arbitrary binary data - 
despite its name payloads are arbitrary octets - the 
dull web programmers have decided the string is the 
only datatype ever needed - because that's the only 
one they understand how to manipulate. REST is very 
useful to obfuscate code, anyway...

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on December 3, 00:54

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

 Really good job Marco.

Comment by Daniele Teti [http://www.danieleteti.it] on December 3, 01:21

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

Marco, 

Thank you both for producing extra material to help
get people started with new features.  It's a big help.

Comment by Bruce McGee on December 3, 01:41

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

Thank you Marco!

I will definitelly check your tutorials.

Comment by Dimitrij on December 3, 10:34

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

 One more thing:

I think that video tutorials shoud be also avalaible
for a download. It is good to have them on hard drive
and check quickly if you forgot about something.

Comment by Dimitrij on December 3, 10:36

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

Thank you, but there is a usability issue with these
white-papers Embarcadero publishes:
 The font used in PDF content is really awful and
barely readable on my LCD screen using Foxit Reader

Comment by Ali [http://vcldeveloper.com] on December 4, 08:24

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

 Note that '<html><heading/>...' on page 30 is not 
rudimentary HTML, it is random tag soup.

Comment by Christopher Yeleighton [] on December 11, 14:03

REST in Delphi 2010 White Paper Published

Christopher,

  I agree with you that the <heading> tag is 
hilarious... and mentioned this in the book chapter, 
which is the source the paper was adapted from (with 
some differences)

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on December 11, 14:15

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