Two unrelated articles I read last week are turning my focus to Delphi web development strategies. The first was a very interesting article on Artima Developer about "Twitter on Scala". This is actually a conversation with Steve Jenson, Alex Payne, and Robey Pointer by Bill Venners, which is both the Artima founder and a very strong backer of Scala. In the article Twitter developers discuss how they moved some of the site backend on Scala (while the core is built in Ruby) for performance and scalability reasons, among others. Very nice reading, I have to say. And Scala is certainly worth a look. The second was a blog post by Dennis Gurock (author of DelphiFeeeds.com) titled "Choosing a Web Development Stack". The first article highlights the key requirements, while in the second he evaluates Java, Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, and PHP... showing why he ended up picking PHP. A very nice summary of pros and cons of various technologies. As I do most of my web development in Delphi, how would it fit in the overall picture? Right now Delphi lacks in cross-platform support (although you are reading a blog powered by a Delphi application running on Linux), web server integration, but most of all there isn't a robust framework geared towards web development. Over the last year or so I'm spent some time (too little?) elaborating on a Delphi framework based on easy deployment (which means, limited need to recompile the core engine), flexibility, speed, and more. My idea is to base it on a REST architecture, both for returning web pages and for returning data to Ajax calls (or stand-alone client applications). I have many ideas and some code ready. So the plan would be to use this blog to layout the foundations and then, if there is enough consensus, start a project around it. The initial goal is to give away the server for free, with the option of making it open source as it gets a little more robust and complete. If no one cares, no big deal... I can move on to other work. By the way, some time ago I named the project DWARF, for Delphi Web Application Rest Framework.
April 16, 2009
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Two unrelated blog posts I read last week are turning my focus to Delphi web development strategies.
14 Comments
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
I wonder why Delphi developers don't use it for Web Development. It has great frameworks like WebBroker and IntraWeb, also open source like ExtPascal and PowTils. Yesterday, for example I made a sample Apache 2.2 module to respond JSON requests to ExtJs tables. It's amazingly simple, and fast, and you can benefit from reusing your existing Delphi code. The only thing I miss from PHP, Java and Python is open source pre-build projects like Plone, Mambo, Joonla, PhpBB, SMF, and others. Maybe nobody made this because of the general thinking of Delphi as an old development environment. I hope your post will encourage us to start creating such frameworks. Leonardo.Comment by Leonardo [http://leonardorame.blogspot.com] on April 16, 21:07
Delphi is not a web development tool
One of the reasons that doomed Delphi in the past seven years was the several fruitless attempts to make it a "web development tool" because that was (is?) the fashion. All other aspects were sacrificed to the Web Moloch (and later .NET). The result is under everybody's eyes. Web developers and applications need different tools - web applications tend to be more dynamic than compiled ones, and a tool/framework/languages allowing fast changes and easy customization are surely winners. That's why "scripting" languages got the stage. Who would code a web site in C++? That's Delphi realm, not the PHP/Python/Ruby one. Cram it there, and none would use it. Maybe something alike PascalScript with a proper framework could work, but that wouldn't be Delphi.Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on April 16, 22:26
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
I completely agree, Delphi never quite made it to the web world. Even if they had lots of good ideas, timing differences with the (historically mainly database/desktop) Delphi developers, unfinished efforts (WebSnap) or lack of ressources (since about Delphi 8) or undiscovered gems (like the client side of InternetXpress) are the visible causes for this. If you want to address to usual Delphi application developers, I think the server side should be REST (for service and AJAX) and Rails/MVC (for server-side rendering). The hosting will be the most interesting, we could learn from asp.net and rails (mongrel) I think. Anyway, it is interesting to see this starting and the buzz/community will gather. Go, Marco! ;)Comment by Marius Popescu [http://mapopescu.blogsome.com] on April 17, 00:00
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Hi there! Some of us are waiting this from your presentation some time ago about a rest framework in Delphi. Actually I'm using webbroker + json + jquery to make ajax applications and the productivity and quality of the work is very very good. Go Fordward with DWARFComment by FrancisR on April 17, 00:49
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
I had used delphi(crosskylix)+webbroker+paxscript created a pascal script page(PSP). very like php. and used superobject+PSP to server Extjs json. it works very good in windows and linux. Go Fordward with DWARFComment by xalion on April 17, 07:06
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Two things are definetly required: first - cross-platform support, may be in cooperation with FreePascal, second - the delphi part should be a server application that easyly interfaces with ExtJS or other JavaScript framework. IMHO, nowdays there is no need for HTML rendering component at all.Comment by Maxim Shiryaev [] on April 17, 08:52
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
How would anyone host a Delphi DWARF/WebBroker REST server? - ISAPI - CGI - Apache module - Windows serviceComment by Marius Popescu [http://mapopescu.blogsome.com] on April 17, 16:15
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
You claim that Delphi lacks a Web Application Development Framework. Yet Atozed Software's own description of IntraWeb states "IntraWeb is the unique web application development framework for Delphi and C++ Builder." How do you reconcile that? Anyway, we have been using IntraWeb for a number of years now for Web Application Development and it has worked great. However, I am very interested to hear more about DWARF.Comment by Dean Millam on April 17, 18:54
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Hi Marco, What's the foundation of your idea? An Isapi? a complete web server? any Other?Comment by FrancisR on April 17, 21:13
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Could be interesting if you use Delphi only for what it's good for. Webserver and database should be established standards (Apache maybe IIS. Db mysql, sqlite): don't write your own. I would like to see database driven web, with a RESTfull interface applicable to multiple AJAX frameworks (flex, extjs, dojotoolkit etc...) Most AJAX examples use some kind of ORM to access server objects. Why not browse 'any' database like a delphi data explorerComment by Rinie on April 20, 10:05
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
If Embarcadero(CodeGear) revived WebBroker, eliminating the one webmodule per application limit and having nested web action levels, doing MVC would be vanilla... Andrea RaimondiComment by Andrea Raimondi on April 23, 17:41
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
It would be awesome if something like web2py was ported to Delphi/FreePascal. Right now, I'm choosing between web2py and Ruby on Rails. I may give Intraweb a try to see if it runs OK under WINE.Comment by Rich on June 19, 16:29
Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Interesting - one year went buy. I would be interested if the opinons have stayed the same:-)Comment by Michael Thuma on April 28, 21:48
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Web Development Stacks... and Delphi
Comment by Roberto Icardi on April 16, 20:31