I'm trying to load a program (.exe) written in Delphi 2010, so I can perform reflection in it. I've got the code to perform the reflection in Delphi, however, I can't seem to find examples or documentation on how to load a compiled binary, so I can do the reflection. All the examples and documentation show reflection being done to classes in the same project.
I know in C#, I'd just use
Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFile('path')
and then reflect on the assembly. Does Delphi have an equivalent Assembly class?
UPDATE:
I ended up not going the reflection or manifest route, I wrote a Delphi dll that gets all the data I need and DllImported the necessary functions. It's far less painful and my go-to method when UI Automation or Win32 can't detect or correctly detect certain UI components.
Related
I was wanting to learn OpenGL using Delphi But never added an library to Delphi or even sure if this is what you need to do? Anyone give some steps on how i would add openGL to delphi so i could call it in the uses section?
You need a wrapper for the OpenGL dlls that declare the types and functions needed, and then you call those functions from your Delphi code. The VCL includes a somewhat limited (and generic) wrapper in OpenGL.pas, but there are better ones available.
One of the popular wrappers for Delphi is the Open Source GLScene, which includes demos and wrapper units. It also includes visual components that you drop on your form just like any other Delphi components. The link above is for the SourceForge project; the GLScene web site has more information, including documentation and FAQs.
Is there a real difference between C++ dlls and Delphi dlls?
A application loads only C++ dlls.
Changing calling convention to cdecl is of no use
Is there a way to find whether a dll is a C++ dll?
What is the advantage of that dll?
I mean a Delphi dll can have parameters and/or return type of Delphi.
Like that C++ dll may have some exclusive data type/
Thanks for any hint
C++ dlls can, of course, use or expose C++-specific items (C++ classes, template functions, etc.), and a Delphi DLL could expose Delphi-specific items (sets, strings, etc.). But if both are written properly, and only use things other languages can use too, there should be no difference.
Fact is that not all C++ or Delphi DLLs are written properly. Also the default calling convention in Delphi is register (__fastcall in C++Builder), while C and C++ by default use cdecl. But generally both languages should use stdcall.
The only way to use a DLL is to either get a header file (.h) for it, or a Delphi import unit. The .h file can be translated into an import unit. If you only have a DLL but none of these, it doesn't make much sense to try to guess the parameters of functions.
If you look at the DLL with TDUMP.exe or Dependency Walker, you might get a hint, as was said in another answer. Dependency on e.g. msvcrtXX.dll might be a good hint it is a C++ DLL.
You might also try to get a .tlb from the DLL. You can do this in the IDE (From memory: "Component menu" - "import component" or some such).
If you want to know the calling convention, read this, especially the part about finding out the calling convention.
Addition
Some C++ programmers forget to wrap their declarations in extern "C" blocks, so the exported functions are mangled. This could tell you which parameters are required, but you get ugly names. For this, Dependency Walker is a great help, as it can translate them (for VC++ generated or compatible DLLs at least). It makes using those functions from a different C++ compiler or a C compiler pretty hard, though.
You can use Dependency Walker to examine the functions in DLLs:
http://dependencywalker.com/
Can anyone recommend a FIX Engine (commercial or open source) for use with Delphi?
Is it possible to use QuickFIX with Delphi?
Take a look at B2BITS FIX Antenna. There are two possible options:
FIX Antenna C++ has ANSI C interface that can be used in Delphi (there is a sample in the package)
http://www.b2bits.com/trading_solutions/fix_engines/fix_engine_cpp.html
FIX Antenna .NET can be used in Delphi .NET (there is again a sample in the package; also programmer's guide contains Delphi.NET samples)
http://www.b2bits.com/trading_solutions/fix_engines/fix_enginenet.html
Feel free to contact me directly if you need more details.
QuickFix is a C++ project.
Both Python and Ruby use SWIG to expose the C++ classes as native Python and Ruby classes.
The .NET wrapper sounds like a mix of C++ and C# code.
It's not possible to import C++ classes within Delphi directly. You'll have to use a "flat API" conversion, exposing all C++ methods as plain C declarations, in order to import external structures and functions in a Delphi unit.
To my knowledge, there is no such "flat API" of QuickFIX available, and no SWIG version able to generate Delphi code. You'll have to write your own wrapper in C++, or perhaps write your own FIX implementation in Delphi.
The only FIX library I know for Delphi is the one from http://www.b2bits.com - it did exist some years ago, but I'm not sure it's still sold/maintained - they seems to maintain only a DotNet version. Worth asking them for pricing and availability, in all cases.
One way to integrate the protocol with Delphi would be building a .Net or Java bridge, for example:
use the .Net C# implementation to build a small application to communicate with the FIX side
then expose methods (and maybe even the objects) of this .Net app over SOAP web services
use Delphi's web service client code generator to import the SOAP WSDL
access the web service from the Delphi side
This is probably more of a hack than anything else, but you could use the Python QuickFIX bindings in Delphi, via python4delphi. That's a lot of layers though (Delphi to Python to C++).
Python is an easy language to use, and learn, and it's easy to invoke and create python objects (or native C wrappers that pretend to be python objects) and invoke them directly from the Python4Delphi API.
Barring that, it might be very little work for you to build a procedural (flat) API as ABouchez said. Instead of writing a million functions I would write only the ones I needed, and then implement these simple functions inside a VC++ DLL:
QuickFixInit;
QuickFixCleanup;
handle := QuickFixLoadFile(filename)
QuickFixSaveFile(handle)
handle2 := QuickFixGetObjectHandle(handle,index,...);
QuickFixModifyObjectProperty(handle2, propertyname, propertyvalue );
QuickFixExecuteSomeAction( handle2, actionname, param1,param2,param3 );
The above are just to give you the flavor. I know nothing about the internal API, but what I'm showing you above is that you don't need to conform 100% to the API to write a wrapper. You could probably (if you know C/C++) write a functional wrapper that does what you need, and export it, link it into a DLL, and then import QuickFix.dll into Python with very little (2-4 hours of an expert's time) work, if you know Visual C++ well enough to write a few simple C-style (non OOP) functions that instantiate C++ classes, and invoke C++ methods.
It might be possible to expose the C++ APIs to Delphi via a C++Builder package (BPL) containing QuickFIx, but (a) some source modifications would be required, and (b) the C++ code in QuickFix, or its dependencies, might not build in C++Builder without significant modifications.
in C# you can easily open an assembly (just another word from an EXE) and then get reflection information from that assembly. I've been looking for something similar for Delphi where I can write a Delphi program that can point to a Delphi EXE then get me reflection information. How can I archive this? Thanks
There are a handful of programs that can extract RTTI from Delphi programs and DLLs. It's not as rich as what's available for .NET, but it can be done to a limited degree. There's a lot more RTTI available in Delphi 2010 and later versions, but as far as I know there's no program out yet that can extract info from them.
I was at the conference where this system was formally announced, and a bunch of people asked how this would affect security. Barry Kelly, who created the new RTTI, said that there would not be enough metadata available to create a "Delphi Reflector".
Well, sad news is, you probably can't. You can easily view .NET assemblies because they a) are compiled to what is called intermediate language (thus you can even get the code back using the likes of Reflector etc.), and b) contain metadata. Delphi, on the other hand, compiles to native code that and produces regular PE files that do not include rich metadata like a .NET assembly.
Delphi just doesn't work that way.
There are tools that can assist in reversing (Delphi written) executables but it will never be easy and it requires good x86 assembly knowledge.
Some examples of such tools are:
IDA Pro and/or Hex Rays
DeDe
Interactive Delphi Reconstructor
PE Explorer
The resource sections of a Delphi Executable also reveals usefull info like the form and it's components.
See also Is there a program to decompile Delphi?
If you have Delphi2010+ you can load a bpl and then use the rich rtti over it lik. e you do with c# and a .net assembly. If you need to do this in a .exe AFAIK you can't.
TestComplete seems to identify most objects in a running Delphi executable. You can extract this information with a script. A demo can be downloaded from http://www.automatedqa.com/downloads/testcomplete
This is maybe not the type of application you want as it is big and made for GUI-testing, but yes it can identify the objects.
As mentioned Remko, IDR (Interactive Delphi Reconstructor) can extract all RTTI information (if program contains it!) for Delphi version from 2 to 2009. Version 2010 will be available later. Moreover IDR can use all information that it finds in program to create a lot of comments to disassemled program code (this is a first step of analyses). You can also look forms and easy go to event hadlers associated with controls.
I read this article and find the concept of Virtual Library Interfaces nice for runtime loading of DLLs. However it seems that they aren't available for Win32. Is this true? And if so: Why? I don't see what would tie the idea to .NET.
EDIT: I'm mostly rephrasing here what Rob already wrote. :-)
I'm not after plugins or similar - it's about plain old Win32 DLLs. What appeals to me is the idea to let the compiler deal with all the details of loading a DLL at runtime - no need to call GetProcAddress for every function in the DLL etc.
It seems to me like the three answers so far have completely missed the point of your question. That, or I have. You're asking why Win32 Delphi doesn't have something like the magical Supports function that Hallvard's article talks about, aren't you? Namely, a function that, given the name of a DLL and the type information of an interface, returns an object that implements that interface using the standalone functions exported from the DLL.
Hydra seems to be all about calling .Net code from a Win32 program, not about importing functions from a DLL. TJvPluginManager requires that the plug-in DLLs export a special self-registration function that the manager will call when it loads the DLL, and the function must return an instance of the TJvPlugin class, so the plug-in DLL must be written in Delphi or C++ Builder. The Supports function, on the other hand, works with any DLL written in any language. You could use it on kernel32, if you wanted.
I don't know why Win32 Delphi doesn't have such a thing. Maybe CodeGear didn't see much demand for it since Delphi and Turbo Pascal had already gone for so long without it.
It's certainly possible to write a function that works like that, and I don't expect it would be any harder to write than the .Net version must have been, unless Microsoft's .Net libraries already provide most of the pieces and Delphi just wraps them up into a convenient-to-call function that looks like the several other overloaded versions of Supports that Delphi has had for years.
There would be a few steps to implementing that function in Win32. (I'm providing only a sketch of what's necessary because I don't have a running copy of Delphi handy right now. Ask nicely, and maybe I'll find more details.) First, you'd need to make sure that type information for an interface held, at a minimum, the undecorated names of its methods. Then, Supports would need to generate a function stub for each method in the interface (besides _AddRef, _Release, and QueryInterface). The stub would go something like this, assuming the calling convention is stdcall:
asm
// Pop the return address,
// discard the "this" pointer,
// and restore the return address
pop eax
pop ecx
push eax
jmp AddressOfFunction
end;
As Supports generated each stub, it would fill in the actual function address, gotten from calling GetProcAddress with the name of the corresponding interface method. The stdcall calling convention is easy to wrap like that; cdecl is a little cumbersome; register is a pain in the neck.
Once it has all the stubs generated, it would need to generate an "object" that looks like it implements the given interface. It doesn't have to be an actual class. At compile time, Supports doesn't know the layout of the interface it's going to be asked to implement, so having a class wouldn't accomplish much.
The final step is to provide implementations of the _AddRef, _Release, and QueryInterface. _AddRef would be unremarkable; _Release is where you'd call FreeLibrary when the reference count reached zero; QueryInterface wouldn't do much at all, except claim that it supports IUnknown and the interface given to Supports.
Delphi used to come with a sample program that demonstrated implementing an interface without any classes at all. It was all done with records and function pointers (which is all an interface ultimately is, after all). Delphi also came with the corresponding code to do it with classes, in part to show how much easier Delphi can make things. I can't find the name of the demo program now, but I'm sure it's still around somewhere.
There are a number of Win32 options for this type of functionality. Project JEDI has an open source plugin system as part of the JVCL that loads either DLLs or packages, and can include forms and whatnot as additional functionality.
There are also a number of commercial products available, including the TMS Plugin Framework and RemObjects Hydra.
This is nothing new or special. The article's just talking about plugins. Native code's been able to do plugins for years. The only special thing about P/Invoke is that it allows native code and .NET to talk to each other in a plugin system, and the little trick where "the DLL can be seen as a singleton object that implements the interface [so that] you can use the Supports function from the Borland.Delphi.Win32 unit to check if the DLL and all the methods are available."
If you want to do what the article's talking about in Delphi for Win32, look at the LoadLibrary, GetProcAddress and FreeLibrary Windows API functions. If you absolutely must have an interface like the article describes, you have to write it yourself, either in the DLL (if you wrote the DLL yourself) by writing an exported function that returns an interface, or in the calling app, by writing a function that uses GetProcAddress to create an interface dynamically. (Caution: this requires mucking around with pointers, and is usually more trouble than it's worth.)
Your best bet is probably just to do what Tim Sullivan mentioned: use TJvPluginManager from the JEDI VCL if you only need native code, or Hydra if you have to talk to .NET assemblies.
I've used Hydra myself for a Delphi only solution (i.e., didn't interface to .NET) and it works great for that too. It's easier to use and adds some niceties, but I think that it's basically implemented the same way as the "roll-your-own" plugin framework that is well-described in this article:
http://www.saxon.co.uk/SinglePkg/
I would look for a plugin framework that's interface-based (like Hydra and the "roll-your-own" system in above paragraph), rather than one that simply sends messages between apps.
There is a Delphi plugin framework on sourceforge, don't know whether it's the same one as in JEDI project or not: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rd-dpf
There are also a couple of other commercial solutions, one of which is Dragonsoft's:
http://www.dragonsoft.us/products_dsps.php
What is wrong with doing this with simple com objects? Declare a simple interface that all of your plugins implement, and require that each com object include an exported function that returns its class guid. Then using the "plugins" is as simple as walking thru the plugins directory looking for DLL's which expose the special registration function, invoking it and then using the class guid to then invoke the com object.
I used something like this in a WIN32 commercial application with great success. The advantage was I could switch plugins in and out at will (provided of course the application wasn't running to remove existing ones), the magic was all in the interface that each one implemented.