How to use capabilities property of TidIMAP4? - delphi

I wanted to find out if anyone knows how to use the capabilities property of the Indy class TIdIMAP4? Its documentation appears to be the minimal auto-generated documentation that does not describe it's purpose or usage at all.
So I wrote some code like so (connection is already open at this poing)
if IMAP.Capabilities.IndexOf('MOVE')<>-1 then begin
IMAP.SendCmd(...);
end;
However, when this didn't seem to be working, I started investigating and found IMAP.Capabilities was an empty string list. I know capabilities are sent by the server on connect, without requesting them, but they appear not to be automatically populated? Am I wrong in thinking that the capabilities list should have been filled in simply by connecting?
Or is there some other command I have to call first? The Capability command looks promising, except that that method appears to store the results in a user-provided string list, so I'm slightly skeptical the string list in IMAP.Capabilities will be magically filled in from this (and if that were the case, why do I have to provide an empty list?) Edit: It appears Capability is overloaded and there's a no-arg version of it. However, I'm still seeing a blank capability list after calling that.

I decided to play with the other overloaded version of Capability where you provide a stringlist to the capability function. This did not return an empty list. I'm suspicious the other method was not working due to some type of variable scope issue, so this is really only a partial answer.
Using Capability in this manner did work:
var
capas : TStrings;
begin
capas := TStringList.Create;
IMAP.Capability(capas);
if (capas.IndexOf('UIDPLUS')<>-1) then
IMAP.SendCmd('UID EXPUNGE '+uidList.commaText);
capas.free;
end;

Related

Access Violation on Accessing a UserSession in Intraweb

I'm new to IntraWeb and have a problem.
In order to implement a Login Form, i stored Datasets in the Usersession.
But when it comes to access the Datasets i get an Access Violation Error.
I figured out, that the Useresession is not created. Now i'm a bit confused, because in the Intraweb Documentary it is said, that the Usersession is created automatically by the ServerController.
I access (respectively want to) the Dataset like this
UserSession.Dataset.open;
I use the IntraWeb Trial included in Rad Studio XE5. May that be the Problem?
In case, that this is not the Problem, how can i create a Usersession manually?
Thank you very much
[Edit 13.4.16]
The problem was the Evaluation Version I used. After installing the Full Version my problem vanished. They changed their Usersession.create procedure by adding another Parameter. So make sure you use the actual Version if u have the same Problem:
Thanks for all the responses
You need to create the 'data' inside session
procedure TIWServerController.IWServerControllerBaseNewSession(
ASession: TIWApplication; var VMainForm: TIWAppForm);
begin
ASession.Data := TUserSession.Create;
end;
be aware that in this example
TUserSession
is an user defined class
type
TUserSession = class
public
UserCount: Integer;
end;
take a look at this tutorial which explains how the sessions management is done in IW - http://etutorials.org/Programming/mastering+delphi+7/Part+IV+Delphi+the+Internet+and+a+.NET+Preview/Chapter+21+Web+Programming+with+IntraWeb/Building+IntraWeb+Applications/
or consult the technical documentation provided by atozed.
I tried adding just a comment, apparently I need more points for that.
The answer will be found if you go into the response given by RBA, but here is the short form:
IW does create and manage the user session automatically. The TIWUserSession, however, is only your part of that. In order to have your own data in the session, .Create the TIWUserSession and add it as the .Data of the session. In IWServerControllerBaseNewSession do this with:
ASession.Data := TIWUserSession.Create(nil, ASession);
Note that the ASession parameter of the procedure is the session managed by IW.
In order to access your TIWUserSession, create a procedure in ServerController:
function UserSession: TIWUserSession;
begin
Result := TIWUserSession(WebApplication.Data);
end;
Expose that procedure in the interface section.
Dan
It occurred to me that we might be "solving the wrong problem".
You indicated that this occurred when you were implementing a login form. You also indicated that a break set in WServerControllerBaseNewSession() did not hit.
In ServerController, do you have "AuthBeforeNewSession" set to True? If so, set it to False and see if the behavior changes.
Dan

Published interface properties bug and workarounds

I wrote a set of components that link to each other via published interface properties. They are registered and installed in a design package.
Using published interface properties is not that common in Delphi, and thus, unsurprisingly, doesn't seem to work that well.
It works fine when components reside on the same form, however interface property links between components on different forms cause issues.
Unlike object links to components on another form, interface links don't seem to be recognized by IDE. What I mean is best described by an example, when you have 2 forms open in IDE, and have links between components on them, then trying to switch to form view as text (Alt+F12) would cause IDE to correctly complain that:
Module 'UnitXXX.pas' has open descendents or linked modules. Cannot close.
But if the property is an interface then this does not happen, what happens instead is that the link is severed (and that's the best case scenario when you use Notification mechanism to clear references, otherwise you're left with an invalid pointer)
Another problem, likely as a consequence of the same bug is that when you open a project in IDE, the order in which forms will be reopened is undefined, so IDE can try to open a form that contains components that have interface links to components on another form, but that other form is not recreated yet. So this effectively results in either AV or severed links.
Back in 90s while I used Datasets and Datasources I remember similar issues with links between forms disappearing, so this is somewhat similar.
As a temp workaround I added duplicate published properties, for each Interface property I added another that is declared as TComponent. This makes Delphi aware there is a link between forms, but is an ugly workaround to say the least.
So I wonder if there is something I can do to fix this issue ? It's an IDE bug and likely not fixable directly, but perhaps I can override something or otherwise hook in to streaming mechanism to more effectively workaround this bug.
I haven't ever gone so deep into streaming mechanism, but I suspect the Fixup mechanism is supposed to deal with this. There is a csFixups TComponentState so I hope a workaround is possible.
Edit: Using D2007.
Update:
New updated reproducible example uploaded to http://www.filedropper.com/fixupbugproject2
Added property ComponentReference: TComponent so that it's easy to compare and trace interface vs component streaming.
I narrowed the problem down to assembler level which is a bit out of my depth.
In procedure GlobalFixupReferences in classes unit it calls:
(GetOrdProp(FInstance, FPropInfo) <> 0)
which eventually executes:
function TInterfacedComponent.GetInterfaceReference: IInterface;
begin
// uncomment the code bellow to avoid exception
{ if (csLoading in ComponentState) and (FInterfaceReference = nil) then
// leave result unassigned to avoid exception
else
}
result := FInterfaceReference; // <----- Exception happens here
end;
As you can see from the comment, the only way I found to avoid the exception is to leave the result unassigned, but that breaks the functionality since comparison above in GlobalFixupReferences fails due to GetOrdProp <> 0, which severes the link.
tracing deeper the more exact location of exception is in
procedure _IntfCopy(var Dest: IInterface; const Source: IInterface); in system unit
This line in particular raises an read of address 0x80000000
{ Now we're into the less common cases. }
##NilSource:
MOV ECX, [EAX] // get current value
So, why MOV fails and what's wrong with ECX or EAX I have no idea.
To summarize, the problem happens only with published interface properties that have a getter method, and the property points to component on another form/module (and that form/module is not recreated yet). In such case restoring form DFM causes an AV.
I'm pretty sure the bug is in the ASM code in GetOrdProp, but it's beyond my ability to fix, so the
easiest workaround is to use a Field instead of a getter method and read it directly in the property. This is, fortunately good enough for my case currently.
Alternatively, you can declare the property as TComponent instead of interface, then write a TComponentProperty descendant, override ComponentMayBeSetTo to filter component that don't support the required interface. And of course register it using RegisterPropertyEditor

How to debug a (possible) RTL problem?

I'm asking this because I'm out of good ideas...hoping for someone else's fresh perspective.
I have a user running our 32-bit Delphi application (compiled with BDS 2006) on a Windows 7 64-bit system. Our software was "working fine" until a couple weeks ago. Now suddenly it isn't: it throws an Access Violation while initializing (instancing objects).
We've had him reinstall all our software--starting all over from scratch. Same AV error. We disabled his anti-virus software; same error.
Our stack tracing code (madExcept) for some reason wasn't able to provide a stack trace to the line of the error, so we've sent a couple error logging versions for the user to install and run, to isolate the line which generates the error...
Turns out, it's a line which instances a simple TStringList descendant (there's no overridden Create constructor, etc.--basically the Create is just instancing a TStringList which has a few custom methods associated with the descendant class.)
I'm tempted to send the user yet another test .EXE; one which just instances a plain-vanilla TStringList, to see what happens. But at this point I feel like I'm flailing at windmills, and risk wearing out the user's patience if I send too many more "things to try".
Any fresh ideas on a better approach to debugging this user's problem? (I don't like bailing out on a user's problems...those tend to be the ones which, if ignored, suddenly become an epidemic that 5 other users suddenly "find".)
EDIT, as Lasse requested:
procedure T_fmMain.AfterConstruction;
begin
inherited;
//Logging shows that we return from the Inherited call above,
//then AV in the following line...
FActionList := TAActionList.Create;
...other code here...
end;
And here's the definition of the object being created...
type
TAActionList = class(TStringList)
private
FShadowList: TStringList; //UPPERCASE shadow list
FIsDataLoaded : boolean;
public
procedure AfterConstruction; override;
procedure BeforeDestruction; override;
procedure DataLoaded;
function Add(const S: string): Integer; override;
procedure Delete(Index : integer); override;
function IndexOf(const S : string) : Integer; override;
end;
implementation
procedure TAActionList.AfterConstruction;
begin
Sorted := False; //until we're done loading
FShadowList := TStringList.Create;
end;
I hate these kind of problems, but I reckon you should focus on what's happening recently BEFORE the object tries to get constructed.
The symptoms you describe sound like typical heap corruption, so maybe you have something like...
An array being written to outside bounds? (turn bounds checking on, if you have it off)
Code trying to access an object which has been deleted?
Since my answer above, you've posted code snippets. This does raise a couple of possible issues that I can see.
a: AfterConstruction vs. modified constructor:
As others have mentioned, using AfterConstruction in this way is at best not idiomatic. I don't think it's truly "wrong", but it's a possible smell. There's a good intro to these methods on Dr. Bob's site here.
b: overridden methods Add, Delete, IndexOf
I'm guessing these methods use the FshadowList item in some way. Is it remotely possible that these methods are being invoked (and thus using FShadowList) before the FShadowList is created? This seems possible because you're using the AfterConstruction methods above, by which time virtual methods should 'work'. Hopefully this is easy to check with a debugger by setting some breakpoints and seeing the order they get hit in.
You should never override AfterConstruction and BeforeDestruction methods in your programs. They are not meant for what you're doing with them, but for low-level VCL hacking (like reference adding, custom memory handling or such).
You should override the Create constructor and Destroy destructor instead and put your initialization code here, like such:
constructor TAActionList.Create;
begin
inherited;
// Sorted := False; // not necessary IMHO
FShadowList := TStringList.Create;
end;
Take a look at the VCL code, and all serious published Delphi code, and you'll see that AfterConstruction and BeforeDestruction methods are never used. I guess this is the root cause of your problem, and your code must be modified in consequence. It could be even worse in future version of Delphi.
Clearly there is nothing suspicious about what TAActionList is doing at time of construction. Even considering ancestor constructors and possible side-effects of setting Sorted := False indicate there shouldn't be a problem. I'm more interested in what's happening inside T_fmMain.
Basically something is happening that causes FActionList := TAActionList.Create; to fail, even though there is nothing wrong in the implementation of TAActionList.Create (a possibility is that the form may have been unexpectedly destroyed).
I suggest you try changing T_fmMain.AfterConstruction as follows:
procedure T_fmMain.AfterConstruction;
begin
//This is safe because the object created has no form dependencies
//that might otherwise need to be initialised first.
FActionList := TAActionList.Create;
//Now, if the ancestor's AfterConstruction is causing the problem,
//the above line will work fine, and...
inherited AfterConstruction;
//... your error will have shifted to one of these lines here.
//other code here
end;
If an environment issue with a component used by your form is causing it destroy the form during AfterConstruction, then it's the assignment of the new TAActionList.Create instance to FActionList that's actually causing the AV. Another way to test would be to first create the object to a local variable, then assign it to the class field: FActionList := LActionList.
Environment problems can be subtle. E.g. We use a reporting component which we discovered requires that a printer driver is installed, otherwise it prevents our application from starting up.
You can confirm the destruction theory by setting a global variable in the form's destructor. Also you may be able to output a stack trace from the destructor to confirm the exact sequence leading to the destruction of the form.
Our software was "working fine" until a couple weeks ago... suddenly become an epidemic that 5 other users suddenly "find".) :
Sounds like you need to do some forensic analysis, not debugging: You need to discover what changed in that user's environment to trigger the error. All the more so if you have other users with the same deployment that don't have the problem (sounds like that's your situation). Sending a user 'things to try' is one of the best ways to erode user confidence very quickly! (If there is IT support at the user site, get them involved, not the user).
For starters, explore these options:
*) If possible, I'd check the Windows Event Log for events that may have occurred on that machine around the time the problem arose.
*) Is there some kind of IT support person on the user's side that you can talk to about possible changes/problems in that user's environment?
*) Was there some kind of support issue/incident with that user around the time the error surfaced that may be connected to it, and/or caused some kind of data or file corruption particular to them?
(As for the code itself, I agree with #Warran P about decoupling etc)
Things to do when MadExcept is NOT Enough (which is rare, I must say):
Try Jedi JCL's JCLDEBUG instead. You might get a stack traceback with it, if you change out MadExcept for JCLDEBUG, and write directly the stack trace to the disk without ANY UI interaction.
Run a debug-viewer like MS/SysInternals debugview, and trace output things like the Self pointers of the objects where the problems are happening. I suspect that somehow an INVALID instance pointer is ending up in there.
Decouple things and refactor things, and write unit tests, until you find the really ugly thing that's trashing you. (Someone suggested heap corruption. I often find heap corruption goes hand in hand with unsafe ugly untested code, and deeply bound UI+model cascading failures.)

Delphi Win32 Programming/Access Violation problems

I wasn't entirely sure how to name this, so apologies in advance.
You see, I'm trying to teach myself Win32/DirectX programming, utilizing Delphi (my language of choice) using this site - http://rastertek.com/tutindex.html
Of course, the site being all in C++, I have to port it to Delphi. It seemed simple enough, at first. I'm on the second tutorial for DirectX 11 - setting up the framework and getting the initial window to show up.
Now for my actual problem. I was getting Access Violation errors. So I found and started to use MadExcept to try and find out what was going on. So it tells me the lines, but I'm clueless as to how to solve the issues at hand.
I have everything set up to mimic as well as I can the original source code. The only real difference being that in the instances where a pointer to a class for a variable, such as the case with m_input, m_grahics, and system, I made a type for those. So I have the TSystemClass, TInputClass, TGraphicsClass, and then I have PSystemClass, etc. that = ^TSystemClass, etc. I figured that this would make things a bit simpler and more neater. On a side note, I assume it should be said, but I for the construction of the copy constructors made the initial classes inherit from TPersistent so I could use it's Assign procedure.
So, back to the Access Violation errors. So first, the problem was in the main program with system being of type PSystemClass. So for a reason unknown to me, when I tried to use system.create, it was at that very instant, creating the access violation. I then realized however that I wasn't assigning system the system.create. So I tried this, and it said that, and rightfully so I suppose, at compile time an error that the two were incompatible since system.create is of type TSystemClass, and system is of PSystemClass. So I tried typecasting it, and that worked. but once again, still getting the dreaded access violations.
So then I had an odd idea, maybe I should call the regular constructor right from the TSystemClass itself. And I tried, needed to typecast again. So I did. And it worked! No longer an access violation error there! Now... New problem! Or rather in this case "problems". There's 3 things now listed in the call stack in MadExcept. The first one:
m_hinstance := GetModuleHandle(nil);
It's saying that this is causing an access violation error. Though why is this, exactly? From what I understand and have read, if GetModuleHandle is set to null/nil, it should retrieve the handle for the file that called it, right? And from what the documentation says, that should be executable.
However note: I'm not sure if the fact that I have the main program, the systemclass stuff, the inputclass stuff, and the graphicsclass stuff, all in different program/unit files to mimic the nature of the original source code. So is this possibly what's causing it? And if so how would I fix it? By putting all of the code from the unit files into the main program file? Though that, in my own personal opinion, would be quite messy and unintuitive.
The next one baffles me even more.
InitializeWindows(ScreenWidth, ScreenHeight);
I'm not dealing with anything other then a function to register the window class and set things up for the window and all here. So I'm not quite sure what the problem here is since it only deals with 2 parameters and they're defined and all already before it's called. So I'm not quite sure what the problem here is at all and what exactly is causing the access violation.
and then finally the final one is in the main program:
return := system.initialize;
Return is what I used in all instances of the result variable of the original source code, as result is of course a built in variable of all functions.
I suppose if system is never able to properly do what it's meant to do then something could/should happen here. Likewise, because I used TSystemClass.Create (typecasted to PSystemClass) earlier to create system would that do anything here? And is it possibly linked to the other two because they're not able to do their own thing properly?
And on a final note; there is one last thing actually on the call stack in MadExcept.
It says Kernel32.dll in the module section, but aside from the main thread, it lists nothing else. (If this information is needed I'll gladly put it up).
Thanks in advance to anyone who's read this far and I hope to find some help on this problem so I may further my studies.
You're instantiating your classes all wrong. Here's an example from TSystemClass.Initialize:
m_Input := PInputClass(m_Input.create);
That's a variable you declared as a PInputClass.
Earlier, in TSystemClass.Create, you initialized that variable:
m_Input := nil;
So, since you have a null reference, it should be clear that you can't call any methods on it. In particular, you cannot call Create on it. Instead, call Create on the class you want to instantiate: TInputClass.Create.
That constructor returns a value of the type you constructed, a TInputClass. It doesn't return a PInputClass, so your type-cast is wrong. As Cosmin's comment explains, Delphi object variables are already pointers. It's exceedingly rare to have to declare a pointer type based on Delphi classes. The correct code is this:
m_Input := TInputClass.Create;
After that line, you check whether m_Input is null. You never have to do that in Delphi; a constructor either returns a valid object, or it doesn't return at all. If there's a problem constructing an object, the constructor throws an exception and the assignment statement never executes. (The original C++ code does it wrong, too. The new operator hasn't returned a null pointer on failure for over a decade, long before anyone was in a position to start writing a DirectX 11 tutorial.)
You should first of all try to get rid of the TPersistent inheritance. If you want to pass an object to a library its interface should be exactly the same as the original that is used in C++. By inheriting from TPersistent you take a whole lot of load into your class that might be not needed or might even be the reason of your problems.
Additionally it would help if you posted the exact output of the exceptions. Or even the CallStack. That might help tracing down the error.

Retrieving Delphi Window Handles

I am trying to get the window handles to a Delphi application from an external application. I can see that there are a few windows created (TApplication, TFrmMain and a few others), and I know that TApplication is the "controller", but never visible. However, can I read what the value for the real window is? I know that it is TFrmMain (for this specific application), but is it possible to actually figure this out somehow? Is the information stored in the window properties,or somewhere else? Thanks!
No, there is no documented way to discover which of the windows represents Application.MainForm from outside the application. In newer versions of Delphi, the main form's window handle isn't necessarily Application.MainForm.Handle anyway; applications can handle the OnGetMainFormHandle event to return whatever they want — that's used for choosing the parent window for modal dialogs.
You can guess by looking for windows with "main" in their class names, but even if you find one, there's no guarantee that there's only one instance of it. Applications can have multiple top-level windows, in which case it doesn't make much sense to designate any one of them as the "main" one.
The class name of any Delphi form is also the registered window classname of the underlying "Windows window". So you should be able to use the FindWindow() Windows API call to get the window handle of TFrmMain a little something like:
hWnd := FindWindow('TFrmMain', NIL);
If there are (potentially) multiple instances of a given form class name then you may be able to distinguish between them by using the 2nd parameter (Window Name, i.e. "caption" or title). If that still isn't enough then you may need to get a little bit more sophisticated and look at using the EnumWindows() function and checking the properties of the windows to find the one of interest.
To test the classname of an arbirary window handle (e.g. in your callback function that you use with EnumWindows()), use GetClassName(), e.g:
function GetWindowClassName(const aHWND: HWND): String;
var
buf: array[0..255] of Char; // Tip: Use a more appropriately sized array
begin
GetClassName(SomeHWND, #buf, Length(buf));
result := buf;
end;
...
if SameText(GetWindowClassName(hwnd), 'TFrmMain') then
...
etc
Without specific details of your particular implementation challenge it's difficult to say which is most likely to work best for you, but hopefully that should be enough pointers to get you heading down the right track.
I usually use WinDowse to help me get started, but then you have to use the API functions as described by Deltics.

Resources