my Main.as extends flash.display.Sprite, I want to use a ComboBox component in the as, without any mxml, how to implement it? I read this Possible to use Flex Framework/Components without using MXML?, its main as extends spark.components.Application, but still need a mxml file. Its main idea is to rewrite the Application component, and reuse it in mxml file. That is not what I want. I uses Flex SDK 4.1
You cannot use Flex components without having your application extend the Flex Application class. The components always require the Flex container.
Either you turn your application into a Flex one - which is possible without using MXML - or you should consider using a pure AS implementation of a ComboBox: GUI Framework for flash (as3)
Related
I have deveoped a custom file type, together with a custom editor (basically a tree with several data pages attached and a few extra buttons). OK, I can run it stand alone and that is fine, and even add it to the tools menu, but I would like to integrate it into the Delphi IDE so that my custom editor (or a similar new version) appears in the IDE, rather like a DFM file has a custom editor. I can find references to most extensions in the Delphi IDE, but not this one. Any guiding hands? Note that this is not a property or component editor (the file type has nothing to do with either of these) nor is it simply syntax highlighting of a text file.
AFAIK it currently isn't possible to reliably integrate a custom editor into the Delphi IDE. The required API simply isn't there. See QC89028 Custom Module support.
During the Delphi 2010 and XE betas I spent most my spare time trying to get a resource editor integrated. Although the effort had the official blessing of Embarcadero and got some, half hearted, support from the IDE engineer, I was never able to get them to deliver on their promises and surface the module API. I eventually abandoned the project.
Update: I've now checked my old correspondence regarding this and it turns out part of the problem was that IOTAModuleCreator (used to implement File|New for custom file types) and IOTAEditorContent (used to transfer data to/from the custom module) only supports text data. Binary data gets mangled.
You can probably do this via an IDE plugin that uses the ToolsAPI (see ToolsAPI.pas in the IDE's source folder (e.g. Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\source\ToolsAPI\ToolsAPI.pas.)
For information on writing a plugin in general, see David G Hoyle's excellent blog. Once you know the basics - i.e., write a 'wizard' and get it to do something - you will need to work on integrating your editor.
I have never done this, and so I can't guarantee it is possible. However, some interfaces that look worth investigating and implementing are INTACustomEditorView, which represents a 'view' (file tab when that file is open - think the code editor, Welcome view, type library editor, etc) and IOTAEditorViewServices, to register your custom view. I do not know how you associate a view type with a file type, sorry - possibly something to do with the personality interfaces. You might also be interested in INTACustomEditorSubView which is what creates a tab on the bottom of a file.
Good luck, and if you find a solution please write here so that other people can learn too!
I'm trying out OmniXML after years of working with the default msxml implementation.
I have several xml structures (some of which are pretty massive) for which I originally created a binding using the Delphi wizard. The binding was then edited manually to fix errors and what not.
First question: is there a (somewhat) easy way to create such a binding for OmniXML? I suspect not, but you never know... I started editing my structures by hand to try and make the interfaces and classes fit into omniXML, but it is quite a bit of (very tedious) work
Second question: In some of the demos, and online, it would seem that the "data binding" (for want of a better term) is done by inheriting the classes defined in OmniXMLPorperties (TGpXMLxxxx). So I started toying with that. Is there an advantage, at least in my case, to defining my data-binding this way as opposed to trying to recycle the one created by the wizard?
Thanks!
PS: In case it matters, I'm using Delphi XE2
Delphi's native XML Data Binding is not tied to any particular XML DOM vendor implementation. It is based on TXMLDocument and related interfaces, which then access vendor-specific DOM interfaces internally.
On Windows, MSXML is the default DOM vendor used. On Mac OSX, ADOM/OpenXML is the default DOM vendor used. But you can change which DOM vendor is used. You just have to assign the DOM vendor's name to the global DefaultDOMVendor variable in the Xml.XmlDom.pas unit, and make sure a corresponding DOM implementation has been registered via RegisterDOMVendor() (for MSXML and ADOM/OpenXML, simply add the corresponding DOM implementation unit in your uses clause - Xml.Win.msxmldom for MSXML, Xml.adomxmldom for ADOM/OpenXML - as they call RegisterDOMVendor() internally).
So in this case, you would simple find (or make) a DOM implementation wrapper for OmniXML so it can plug into TXMLDocument, then register it with RegisterDOMVendor(), and set the DefaultDOMVendor variable to the registered DOM name.
I'm using embedded Delphi 2010 localization tools and I can't find the way how to change interface language at runtime. So, how can I change interface language at runtime ?
VCL is not designed such way that it would make runtime language switch easy. The RichEdit demo is actually using form reallocation. It is too strong action for a language switch because you will lose everything you have done for the forms on runtime.
Some localization tools have implemented add-on to VCL to implement runtime language switch. Some use components together with proprietary translations data to perform this. Some use the standard resource DLL with some units linked to application to perform language switch. For example take a look at this document. It describes step by step who to perform runtime language switch without needing to reallocate forms and without losing any data.
http://www.sisulizer.com/translation/vcl/VCL.pdf
Be careful with arrays containing resourcestring!
See the RichEdit demo in Demos\DelphiWin32\VCLWin32\RichEdit directory.
I want to test a Delphi application with Coded UI Tests, but I have some problems. I want access to some elements in the UI but cannot access all elements.
There is a list on the screen with some rows (according to the search parameters) and I want to access these rows to check the consistency of the values. But with the cross of Coded UI Test Builder I cannot access the rows on the application. How do I access the rows?
I just found one solution for now: Develop an extension for Coded UI Tests to interact properly with my Delphi application like the sample on the Microsoft Web site. It's an extension for Excel that allow you to access each cell. But it sounds difficult and the application I have to test is really complex as well.
If your interface is plain VCL, you can access most components by using their underneath HWND handle. It will work for TEdit TMemo TComboBox TCheckBox and so one. But some graphics components won't be able to be accessible from GDI messages, e.g. TLabel or TGrid.
So I guess you'll have to use a Delphi plug-in in your application, to let accessible the VCL components level. Use the ComponentCount + Components[] properties of a TForm (via recursive call) to access your component to be tested. Then publish its properties to the Coded UI Tests extension, which is to be written.
I speak about a "plug-in" here, because I do not think we may easily have access to all classes to be monitored / modified. Some "plug-in" architecture may help an application to work as usual, or in "Coded UI Tests mode", during testing phase. Perhaps better that a separated compilation for the purpose of tests: you should better test the final compiled executable. If you want only unit testing, you may recompile, stub and mock your application to only test a given form. But you'll need to code the form to be easily unit-tested (using dependency injection or such), which is far from easy in the default Delphi world (as with other RAD approaches).
Could be interesting to initiate an Open Source project (included with DUnit?) to develop such a platform. Or use an existing UI test framework for Delphi as base. A lot of companies we work in are mixing .Net and Delphi technologies, and would benefit for such a tool.
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.