flydev Posted January 6, 2020 Share Posted January 6, 2020 (edited) Hi everyone, While enjoying every day with ProcessWire - not building websites - but native apps and API. Just to say that I have a desire for a few months that is to teach you how to build an RestAPI and a cross-platform native application for iOS, MacOS, Android, Windows and maybe Linux in some weeks by coding in Delphi (Pascal) and using our awesome CMF ProcessWire as a backend. Why Delphi ? Embarcadero released a free edition of their IDE/Compiler (the FREE Delphi Community Edition) and everyone can enjoy building real native apps. It also give me now the opportunity to share this experience with you, as the license without the free edition was starting at ~1500$ for the Pro Edition. Also, Delphi is easy to learn, in particularly the FireMonkey frameworks which will be used to build those apps. At least I think ! When I personally begun to write code in Delphi, I had years of experience of the internal Windows API and C/C++ coding background. Still, it's just a desire, and i don't know if there are people interested by this - so let's vote ! Edited January 6, 2020 by flydev ?? 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teppo Posted January 6, 2020 Share Posted January 6, 2020 Heya! Just wanted to drop in to mention that this was a difficult one: I'm interested in this topic in general, but you kind of lost me at Delphi (Pascal). Although, that being said, the Embarcadero website makes their platform look interesting (and looking around a bit, I see folks advocating for it), so might still come around. Anyway, just wanted to clarify why I voted for "not really interested". Wish there was a "mildly interested" or "could be persuaded" option ? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gebeer Posted January 6, 2020 Share Posted January 6, 2020 The RestAPI part in particular would be very interesting. I know there are some modules/site profiles already. But since you seem to do that quite frequently, you sure have some nice tips/concepts to share. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Chris Posted January 8, 2020 Share Posted January 8, 2020 The free edition of Delphi looks interesting, but then I saw the terms - once you generate more than $5000 in revenue per year you have to pay. The community edition of Microsoft Visual Studio doesn't have any revenue limits, although I've had issues with it crashing and corrupting project files, and losing dependencies, so something more reliable might be worth a look. Native apps connected to a REST API are something I've started doing via ASP.Net and Xamarin, but I'd be interested to see how to do it via Processwire, at least for the backend, as I suspect that might be easier to code than ASP.Net. At this stage I don't really need iOS or MacOS, just Android, so I guess I could use Android Studio for the front end. AFAIK, Apple doesn't build devices with integrated barcode scanners without having to write code, but there are Android devices that do, and the scanner simply becomes an alternative input method to the touch screen. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bernhard Posted January 8, 2020 Share Posted January 8, 2020 I just voted YES because of the backend part ? Thx in advance! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elabx Posted January 8, 2020 Share Posted January 8, 2020 I'm also very interested in the backend part and all the security implications it might have, though being absolutely sincere I'm not seeing myself using Delphi. Thanks for your interest in sharing! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flydev Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 On 1/8/2020 at 2:30 AM, Kiwi Chris said: Native apps connected to a REST API are something I've started doing via ASP.Net and Xamarin, but I'd be interested to see how to do it via Processwire, at least for the backend, as I suspect that might be easier to code than ASP.Net. We could build also the server part with Delphi, but using ProcessWire as a database interface, make the whole thing easier. It's incredible. If you couple it with a real server dedicated server, you have full speed. I have a setup where an embarked client communicate with a server-application made with Delphi through TCP/IP, relying the requests on localhost to ProcessWire : On 1/8/2020 at 2:30 AM, Kiwi Chris said: the scanner simply becomes an alternative input method to the touch screen. You mean a device like this ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Chris Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 21 hours ago, flydev ?? said: like this ? Not quite. My client had the requirement for a barcode scanner that would work independently of a PC, with the potential to store data if a wifi connection was not available. There are Android devices that have a built in barcode scanner. The barcode scanner does function in a similar way to the device shown, but it is part of a small Android tablet, so no wires, and there's a button on the side of the tablet to click to trigger the scanner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts