Month: July 2014

Categories
webinar

Developer Skill Sprint: Effectively Using Delphi Generics with Ray Konopka

There was some confusion and a mix up with Ray Konopka’s developer skill sprint on Effectively Using Delphi Generics. We decided to move it to August 5th. So be sure to register for the new round of skill sprints and join us then.

August 5 Effectively Using Delphi Generics with Ray Konopka
August 7 Refactoring Object Pascal with Alister Christie
August 12 Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) with Roman Yankovsky
August 14 DataSnap Simple Calculator Service with Pawel Glowacki
August 19 Build an MVVM App in Twenty Minutes with Nick Hodges
August 21 JSON: The New INI File with Jeff Lefebvre
August 26 TMS Specifics with Bruno Fierens
August 28 New Object Pascal Language Features
September 2 Controlling Dynamic Field Creation in TDataSets with Cary Jensen

You can still catch the replays from the last series too, including the YouTube playlist and watch them all.

Categories
Android iOS Mobile REST Source Code webinar

Mobile Summer School 6: REST & BaaS

Here are the slides and downloads from my mobile summer school session on REST & BAAS. If you just want the slides they are on Slide Share. I’ll post the video and more details here later.

For more information on BaaS, check out Sarina’s excellent series of blog posts.

Categories
Mobile Source Code webinar

Mobile Summer School Lesson 5: App Tethering Round-Up

I substituted for David I. yesterday for Developer Direct Mobile Summer School on Lesson 5: Connecting Mobile and Desktop together using App Tethering. The Summer School landing page and David’s blog maintain a list of downloads for all the previous lessons, but here are the resources from my session in the meantime.

I’ll post the replay videos here when they are available too.

You can download my slides and code samples from Code Central. I believe I fixed the issue where some people were not able to download it.

cc.embarcadero.com/item/29907

Here are the links to more information on App Tethering:

Here is the Developer Skill Sprint I did previously on App Tethering

And this is Al Mannarino’s C++ Mobile Day session on the topic

And some blog posts on the topic too:

There was some interest in the code sample that bypasses App Tethering’s autodiscovery to connect directly to a specific IP address. I’m working on getting that tested before posting it. Leave a comment if you are interest and I’ll see that you are notified when it is ready.

Categories
Android Mobile Source Code Tools webinar

Skill Sprint: Android Voice – Speech Recognition and TTS

Androids can talk and listen!For my Developer Skill Sprint I was originally scheduled to show how to do a Google Glass Voice Trigger. That is pretty cool because it allows you to launch a Google Glass app with your voice, but I decided to expand on that to also show how the Google Glass app can be launched with the results of additional voice input, as well as how to take dictation and do text to speech everywhere else in Android.

I’ve still got a lot of work to do on the components, but they work as is for now. If you want to modify the component code then take a look at my Skill Sprint and blog post on the Android JNI Bridge.

 

Categories
Android Mobile MVP News Source Code Tools webinar

Android JNI Bridge and Custom Classes.dex

By creating a custom Classes.dex you can get access to 3rd party Java JAR APIs from your application. For my Integrate More Android with a JNI Call to your Android App Developer Skill Sprint I created a demo app that demonstrates creating a custom Classes.dex. This is a new feature in XE6 and Appmethod 1.14. [Download the demo] [Download the slides] The Demo app uses the Base64Coder JAR file (included). To build the demo:

  1. Examine the createdex.bat file to make sure it refers to the correct location for your dx.bat utility and the fmx.jar & android-support-v4.jar files.
  2. Run the createdex.bat file to create the classes.dex file which includes the two jar files above, plus the base64coder.jar file.
  3. Double check that the Deployment Manager references the new classes.dex and not the old ones, and that the remote path is “classes\”
  4. Notice that the android.JNI.Base64Coder.pas file wraps and exposes the methods of the base64coder class.
  5. Run the app on your Android device and verify that it works as expected.

The Base64Coder.JAR is Android specific, so it will not work on iOS or Windows. Some additional notes from the Developer Skill Sprint: Some useful units for making JNI calls

  • Androidapi.Jni – Java Native Interface type definitions
  • Androidapi.JNIBridge – The JNI Bridge
  • Androidapi.JNI.JavaTypes – JString and other common types.
  • Androidapi.Helpers – JStringToString and other useful conversions.
  • FMX.Platform.Android– Useful platform methods like GetAndroidApp, MainActivity and ConvertPointToPixel
  • Others useful units: Androidapi.AppGlue, Androidapi.JNIMarshal, Androidapi.JNI.Embarcadero
  • For more see: C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\14.0\source\rtl\android (Object Pascal) and C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\14.0\include\android\rtl (C++)

You will want to make use of Conditional Defines in Object Pascal and Predefined Macros in C++. In my blog post on Android Settings I showed how to make a JNI call with Object Pascal, but you can also look at the DeviceInfo Mobile Code Snippet in both C++ and Object Pascal. To create your own JNI Bridge wrappers, look at the source code in C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\14.0\source\rtl\android (Object Pascal) and C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\14.0\include\android\rtl (C++). You can also consider the following 3rd party utilities:

If you just want to include standard Android APIs then check out the FMXExpress (also an Embarcadero MVP) project on GitHub that includes all the Android APIs. Here is the video replay of my skill sprint

Also, check out Brian Long’s video on accessing the Android API with XE5

Categories
REST webinar

Integrate Cloud Services with the REST/JSON Client

As part of the free Developer Skill Sprint on REST & JSON here are my slides and sample source code. Appmethod, RAD Studio, Delphi & C++Builder XE6 ship with the Desktop sample RESTDemos sample which includes examples for:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google Tasks
  • Foursquare
  • Dropbox
  • Plus Some others

That includes both OAuth1 and OAuth2 usage. My Dropbox demo is a mobile app written in both C++ and Object Pascal. It uses OAuth2 and the mobile TWebBrowser to perform the authentication. You can view and download the slides as well. Useful links:

So upgrade to XE6 or download the trial today.

Here is the video for the Skill Sprint: