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.
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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.
I have written a framework for Android and Windows, and got some tool that draw the forms and scripting that run on both enviroments. Just another solution like thousands.
What I want to do now is using Delphi (Xe2 in my case) to write an IDE like Delphi itself. That I could manage source files in a project and have forms. I have much of it already on DevExpress components. But I was wondering if there is anything that I could reuse to not invent the wheel again.
Certanly the drawing form should be necessary to have changes for my particular case, however it being capable of drawing forms with buttons, text, those common controls we find in majority of the platforms.
Right now I am using Balsamiq Mockup to draw and export xml to my compiler to integrate on the framework, it is nice, because it is a great drawing product, howeve there is a need to have all that IDE properties integrated and the need to put events on each control, for that an IDE all in one solution is better.
TMS Scripter -> I have found this commercial package, that comes with basically everything I need, scripting (I need VB but with different flavor, I believe it could be changed), form designer, project management, etc... It is very nice indeed. However I would like to hear of open source solutions
How about Lazarus? I think that's free, and it certainly has an extensive IDE.
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/
It's not a Delphi Open Source IDE, but I think it is free for use and feature rich:
MS Visual Studio Shell
what-is-the-visual-studio-shell-standalone-shell-good-for
RemObject use it for there tools. So it fits also for Delphi.
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.
Why isn't anyone developing QT bindings for Delphi.
In the past we had QT 2.x integrated as CLX in Delphi.
I really hate the CLX wrappers since they were buggy and hard to extend.
But why isn't anyone making an API list of external DLL calls to use (the same way JCL wraps the Windows API).
Is it so hard to code such API function mapping? Or maybe the QT classes cannot be exposed to non-C callers?
Any hint in this direction is welcome.
qtintf.dll seems to be the flat API DLL you're looking for and Qt.pas the corresponding import unit.
I recommend you wait for VCL+, that is the Qt binding coming with the next version of Delphi.
The problem is that Qt is heavily macro-based and C++ based. So the Qt "flat API" is quite verbose and big. I wonder how EMB will create its own VCL+ binding, but I'll definitively wait for their implementation for using Qt on any Delphi project.
If you can't wait, and really want cross-platform User Interface (with Mac O$ support), I recommend using http://www.twinforms.com/products/wxformsdelphi and not Qt. It relies on a separate DLL, but it's easier to develop, and well maintained/documented.
I managed to port the qt4.pas from
http://users.telenet.be/Jan.Van.hijfte/qtforfpc/fpcqt4.html.
It is originally written for Lazarus but I managed to port it to Delphi.
One must do the following
declare
type
PUInt = ^Integer;
PTRUINT = PUInt;
PtrInt = ^Integer;
PPtrInt = ^PtrInt;
comment out all calls with "qword" paramters since quad-words are not supported in Delphi
comment out "{$mode objfpc}{$H+}" since this is Lazarus stuff
replace all "cdecl; external" with "cdecl; overload; external"
Than the demos can be compiled and run just fine with Delphi.
From what I've heard, apparently the cross-platform component library for Delphi XE2 (version due out next year) will be QT based, sorta like CLX only it should actually work right.
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.