TOPIC

We're going to start off 2019 with a series of meetings that show you how to build a mobile application that talks to a server back-end. David will show a project built with Delphi 10.2 Tokyo that has two parts: 1) a Windows server console application that talks to an InterBase database and provides an API to which a client application connects; and 2) an Android app that connects to the server and communicates JSON data via REST protocols.

This first meeting will introduce the project and go over the database and server application. We will look at a powerful, open source framework for building web apps, called DMVC Framework. We'll show how to establish REST protocols, serialize JSON data, and test and debug your API.

TOPIC

For anyone who wants to just chat about Delphi or related technical (or non-technical) topics, David Cornelius will be at the restaurant tonight at the regular time.

TOPIC

Since our regularly scheduled meeting for November fell on the day before Thanksgiving and NO ONE would be there, we decided to move the meeting date forward a couple of weeks. We don't normally meet in December, but we'll make an exception because it's early enough in the month that it shouldn't conflict with any holiday/family plans.

We won't have a specific presenter but could start off the discussion with how the year went for everyone, touch on some of the interesting news highlights in the tech industry, and go from there.

TOPIC

This is Part II to August's topic in a way because we will be looking at a different way to get your legacy applications to run through a browser. However, this time we'll be looking at a different product from the same company that provided Thinfinity VirtualUI. There are cases where that scenario doesn't quite cut it. Cybele Software provides another solution, Thinfinity Remote Desktop Server.

There are many Remote Desktop clients and other ways to access remote desktops through a browser. We will briefly explore options, then dive into the configuration details of Cybele Software's offering.

PRESENTER

David Cornelius is a software developer building applications for almost any platform, creating e-commerce integrations for Retail Pro, and enabling Windows applications to run in the cloud from any HTML5-enabled browser. He writes in Delphi, C#, and uses several web technologies. You can read more about him at Cornelius Concepts, LLC.

Unfortunately, due to schedule conflicts, this meeting has been canceled. We'll see you next month!

TOPIC

This month we will show how, by adding a simple library to your old Delphi code, your Windows VCL application can run through a web browser on any device that supports HTML5. No need to use WebBroker or convert it to IntraWeb or Firemonkey, just simply open up your project, add a unit, recompile, and it now is able to paint on an HTML5 Canvas--provided the Thinfinity VirtualUI server is running.

Additionally, there are hooks to enable your application to interact with the web browser to which it is painting and enhance the user experience in expected "web" ways.

Come tonight and see how easy it is to take your application to the web!

PRESENTER

David Cornelius is a software developer building applications for almost any platform, creating e-commerce integrations for Retail Pro, and enabling Windows applications to run in the cloud from any HTML5-enabled browser. He writes in Delphi, Free Pascal, and C# and uses several web technologies. You can read more about him at Cornelius Concepts, LLC.

Due to scheduling conflicts of multiple parties, this month's meeting has been canceled.

We'll meet again in August.

TOPIC

If you've ever used Linux, you may be familiar with software package managers such as RPM or APT to easily install and update software along with their dependencies. A few years ago, someone decided that Windows should be able to enjoy this same ease of maintaining software packages and started Chocolatey, a package manager for Windows using PowerShell scripts and the NuGet infrastructure.

Typically, when installing software, you need to look for them on the web, select a mirror to download from, go to your downloads folder, launch the installer, acknowledge licenses, then repeating for each program. Once you get setup to run Chocolatey scripts, you can run simple commands to automate this. For example, to install Chrome and Firefox browsers and the AdBlockPlus extension on each, simply run these four PowerShell commands:

choco install googlechrome
choco install firefox
choco install adblockpluschrome
choco install adblockplus-firefox


and in a few moments, your two favorite browsers will be ready to use. Of course, you could put these commands along with several others into a script, save it to USB drive or online storage, and re-run it any time you're setting up a new environment.

How much time could you save next time you need to setup a new development machine if you could install all your favorite tools by running a script? Or what if you could run an update script once a week that would check for updates to all your software and update them for you?

THAT is the whole goal of Chocolatey--saving time. Lots of time!

Many of the packages in the Chocolatey public repository are open source, others require a license after installing such as Visual Studio Professional. Unfortunately, (at the time of this writing) there are no packages to install Delphi. However, there is a way to create your own Chocolatey packages to install your own licensed and locally stored software, automatically put in license keys, and automate the process.

That's what we'll see tonight--how to get your own licensed copy of Delphi ready for quick installs. Come tonight and watch a new virtual machine get setup, ready with browsers, tools, databases, and of course, Delphi, in ONE hour!

PRESENTER

David Cornelius is a contract software developer building applications for almost any platform, creating ecommerce integrations for Retail Pro, and enabling Windows applications to run in the cloud from any HTML5-enabled browser. He writes in Delphi, Free Pascal, C#, PowerShell, and uses several web technologies. You can read more about him at Cornelius Concepts.

TOPIC

We've talked a lot about the SOLID principles of software development over the last couple of months. The last letter, D, stands for Dependency Inversion. We'll discuss this with examples and talk about the Spring library and how its Dependency Injection plays into this--if you do it right!

PRESENTER

Ron Grove will again lead the discussion, based in large part on his deep knowledge of the subject having read the book the SOLID principles were based on before the acronym was coined.

TOPIC

This is a continuation of the discussion on SOLID programming principles we started last month. We'll finish up our coverage of Single Responsibility and Open/Closed principles, then continue on with aspects of the other three:

• Liskov Substitution - objects in a program should be replaceable with instances of their subtypes without altering the correctness of that program,
• Interface Segregation - many client-specific interfaces are better than one general-purpose interface, and
• Dependency Inversion - one should depend upon abstractions, not concretions.

PRESENTER

This will be a group discussion led by Ron Grove.