Publishing Delphi Apps to the Microsoft Store

In this video, I will guide you through the steps to get your Delphi app published in Microsoft’s App Store. For this demonstration, I will use a Firemonkey app, but technically the same thing would work with VCL apps as well.

This is the appx that I published and got certified by Microsoft. It’s a simple Hash calculator. Nothing too fancy, but useful enough to successfully pass Microsoft’s verification procedures: Microsoft Store – HashExpert

CData: Connecting to WordPress from Delphi

In this episode of my „Delphi Quick Thoughts“ series, I am demonstrating how to connect to a WordPress site from Delphi. I am using CData’s WordPress Enterprise connector for that.

https://www.cdata.com/firedac/

CData has more than one hundred „Enterprise Connectors“ that connect to almost every data source, that you can imagine: SAP, Twillio, WordPress, ActiveDirectory, SalesForce – just to name a few. These Connectors are implemented as FireDAC drivers. In other words, you can talk to all of these data sources by using SQL Queries and/or Stored Procedures, you don’t have to learn new syntaxes and components but just check the available schema and methods.

For WordPress, for example, check the docs here:
http://cdn.cdata.com/help/FWE/fire/pg_connectingtowordpresswebdesktop.htm

You can download the sources that I used in the video here.
Note: I left the app id and secret in the sources for your references but changed them on my server, so the app won’t be able to connect to my server anymore. You will need your own WordPress instance that is.

Delphi CE Bootcamp 2018: Threading and Performance Tuning

Last week I had my „Threading and Performance Tuning“ lecture at Embarcadero Academy. It was an interesting experience and it looks like I’ll be using that platform for more courseware in the near future.

So if you are interested in how to work with TThread and TTask in Delphi, then feel free to checkout my lecture at Embarcadero Academy.

Below is the replay of the live Q&A session, which is a good teaser on what to expect in the full lecture. (The sound is a little bit flakey, as it was recorded live. The actual lectures have better sound)

 

Better Performance with REST Compression

Many Delphi applications, esp. mobile iOS or Android apps, are using REST, to retrieve data from a backend. Often TRESTClient and TRESTRequest are used to get access to an external REST api. There several Blogs and CodeRage videos (including from me), that demonstrate how to do this. Even the Delphi online documentation has a fairly simple tutorial on this topic:

Delphi Songsterr REST Tutorial

Most of these sample have on thing in common: They are slower as possible!

Most REST APIs are hosted on more or less modern WEb server, be it IIS, Apache, Nginx or whatever. All those support HTTP(S) compression. The actual api implementation usually doesn’t know about that.

Following the example from Delphi’s documentation, after executing the following request from a Webbrowser and investigating the transferred data in the browser’s Web console, you will probably think like „Excellent, that chatty XML has been compressed down to just about 10%“. And indeed this may result in an important speedup for your app.

https://www.songsterr.com/a/ra/songs.xml?pattern=Marley

In Firefox‘ Web Console you can easily identify the compression – obviously the XML data is shrunk down to less than 10%:

Komprimierte Daten

If you now do the same test with Delphi’s RESTDebugger (which internally uses TRESTClient), then the problem gets apparent immediately:

Clearly, data is transferred uncompressed here – slowly that is. The reason is, that an HTTP-Sever usually doesn’t compress data „just so“. The browser/client has to ask for it. Common Web browsers automatically ask the server to compress data. Delphi’s TRESTClient does not do this automatically.

Solution:

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  LValue:TJSONValue;
begin
  RESTRequest1.AcceptEncoding := 'gzip, deflate, br';
  RESTRequest1.Execute;
  LValue:=RESTResponse1.JSONValue;
  MemoContent.Text:= LValue.ToString;
end;

This asks the Web server to compress data, preferably using „gzip“. You can try that in Delphi’s RESTDebugger by adding a „Header Parameter“ like that:

and – surprise – the server sends back compressed data:

Setting Accept-Encoding via TRESTRequest.AcceptEncoding or via Header-Parameter, does not matter. Important though, check that “ Do not encode“ checkbox in RESTDebugger. Or set „DoNotEncode“ in your source code (without that, the spaces and commas will be URL encoded) :

  //Either like this
  LRequest.AcceptEncoding := 'gzip, deflate, br';
  //OR like this
  LParam := LRequest.Params.AddHeader('Accept-Encoding', 'br, gzip, deflate');
  LParam.Options := [poDoNotEncode];
  //-->> same result!

 

Bessere Performance mit REST Kompression

Viele Delphi Anwendungen, speziell mobile iOS oder Android Apps, verwenden REST, um an ihre Daten zu gelangen. Häufig werden dazu TRESTClient und TRESTRequest eingesetzt, insbesondere wenn auf eine externe RESTAPI zugegriffen wird. Dies wird in einigen Blogs oder CodeRage Beiträgen (auch von mir) demonstriert. Zum Nachlesen findet sich auch in der Delphi Dokumentation ein einfaches Tutorial:

Delphi Songsterr REST Tutorial

Den meisten dieser Beispiele ist eines gemeinsam: Sie sind unnötig langsam!

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CodeRage 3: Video – iOS Apps mit Schlüsselbund verbinden

Vergangene Woche haben wir mit Embarcadero Deutschland erfolgreich die nunmehr dritte Coderage über die Bühne gebracht.

Hier findet ihr sämtliche Webinare zum nächträglichen Anschauen. Vielen Dank an Matthias Eissing – für die nicht unerhebliche Arbeit und auch die Geduld, alle Videos der Sprecher einzusammeln und aufzubereiten.

Hier mein Beitrag, der zeigt, wie man in FireMonkey iOS Apps den Apple Schlüsselbund aktiviert, um bei Login-Feldern dem Benutzer die Arbeit zu erleichtern. Den in der Session erwähnten Quelltext findet ihr hier.

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Signing Windows Delphi Applications

FireMonkey apps for iOS and Android are automatically signed during the deployment process in Delphi – this is especially important for iOS apps and was therefore implemented in the Delphi IDE.

For Windows applications (no matter if 32 or 64 bit) there is no signature option in Delphi. This might lead to many Delphi apps being distributed unsigned. However, this is no longer recommended for Windows 10 or later, because the „SmartScreen-Filter“ introduced with Windows 10 blocks „untrusted“ applications by default. An unsigned application (EXE) is per se „untrustworthy“, because its origin cannot be verified.

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Signieren von Windows Delphi Anwendungen

FireMonkey Apps für iOS und Android werden in Delphi im Rahmen des Bereitstellungsprozesses automatisch signiert – dies ist inbesondere für iOS Apps unabdingbar und wurde daher in der Delphi IDE auch entsprechend umgesetzt.

Bei Windows Anwendungen (egal ob 32 oder 64 Bit) ist dagegen keine Signatur-Option in Delphi zu finden. Dies dürfte dazu führen, dass viele Delphi Apps unsigniert verteilt werden. Dies ist jedoch spätestens seit Windows 10 nicht mehr zu empfehlen, denn der mit Windows 10 eingeführte „SmartScreen-Filter“ blockiert standardmäßig „nicht vertrauenswürdige“ Anwendungen. Eine unsignierte Anwendung (EXE) ist per se „nicht vertrauenswürdig“, da ihre Herkunft nicht verifiziert werden kann.

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Setting the correct Xcode build number for Delphi FMX Apps

If your Xcode version updates (manually or by Apple’s updating mechanism) then make sure to re-import the iOS/macOS SDK from within Delphi.

To build and deploy iOS/macOS apps with Delphi, you need Xcode for the final steps, even though the actual binary is compiled by Delphi. Apple frequently delivers minor updates to Xcode. Current version as of the writing of this article is 8.3.2. This version number of the Xcode build used for preparing apps is apparently checked by Apple, when uploading an IPA file to App Store/iTunes Connect. They don’t do any spooky things, they just check the DTXcodeBuild key in your app’s info.plist file:

 

This info.plist file is generated by Delphi, and contains various essential settings, such as version number, device requirements etc. Many of these settings can directly be configured, by modifying the values in Delphi – Project – Options – Version Information

DTXCodeBuild is filled in by Delphi automatically though. When you import iOS/macOS SDK, then PAServer obviously issues this command:

/usr/bin/xcodebuild -version -sdk

That returns the available SDK versions and the Xcode build number:

iPhoneOS10.3.sdk - iOS 10.3 (iphoneos10.3)
SDKVersion: 10.3
Xcode 8.3.2
Build version 8E2002

This build version number is apparently stored and used to fill the DTXcodeBuild key’s value.

To bring this number in Delphi in sync with the actual Xcode version, after Xcode was updated (or switched with xcode-select), you have to delete the SDK from Delphi and re-import it using Delphi – Tools – Options – SDK Manager.

This is especially important if you imported the 10.3 SDK while having Xcode 8.3.0 installed. In that case your Delphi iOS apps would be tagged with being built with exactly that version – no matter if you downgraded to Xcode 8.2.1 or applied my „Package Application fix“ – which is required due to a tool chain change that Apple imposed with Xcode 8.3 and up. Any iOS app tagged with being built with Xcode 8.3.0 will be refused by Apple, as that version has been deprecated.

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