The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Delphi’ Category

Answered @ stackoverflow – on virtual constructors called through class references in Delphi

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/27

I just tried to elaborate on an answer to a question from Michael Justin on stackoverflow.
(yes, that’s the author of some message broker clients like the Habari ActiveMQ client that allows Delphi applications to talk to the Apache ActiveMQ message queueing broker).

His question is on virtual constructors and class reference: How can I detect if a Delphi class has a virtual constructor?
The combination of class references and virtual constructors is one of the fundaments of how Delphi became Delphi; in simple terms:

  • class references allow you to register components on the component palette in Delphi
  • virtual constructors allows the designer to construct  the instances of those components at design time

That’s why I think it is important to describe the distinction between virtual constructors and regular non-virtual constructors in the answer below (which is a copy of the answer I posted to stackoverflow)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Pingback, Software Development, Stackoverflow | Leave a Comment »

Delphi – bizarre use of class helpers to circumvent ‘with’

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/27

Quite a while ago, a co-worker asked how to get tot the Instance variable when using a with statement like this:

function TMyForm.ExecuteForm(FormClass: TFormClass): Integer;
begin
  with FormClass.Create(self) do
    try
      Result := ShowModal;
    finally
      Free;
    end;
end;

So I wrote the blog entry below when I started my blog last week, and set the published date to somewhere early May, a week that will be really busy.
Then I found out about the Stackoverflow question Reference object instance created using “with” in Delphi followed by the answer by user ‘Alexander‘ (a really smart Russian guy).
Enough coincidence to publish the blog article earlier than scheduled :-) 

Before I explain why I really hate ‘with’, lets show what my co-worker wanted, and my solution: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Pingback, Software Development, Stackoverflow | 2 Comments »

Conferences, seminars and other public appearances « The Wiert Corner

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/26

On request, I have started to maintain a page about the events I have spoken at or will be speaking at.

The page serves as a central landing spot for people wanting to download materials of past appearances, or wanting to meet me in person on future appearances.

Currently, it contains

I will extend it with more downloads and more events over time (and blog about it when it gets extended).

Drop me a message at the contact form when you need more of the past downloads (I have been speaking at conferencs since 1995, so there is quite a lot of material <g>)

Posted in About, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, PowerDay | Leave a Comment »

Spoken @ Delphi 2009 interactive briefing on April 1st, 2009 (no joke!) on migrating from Delphi 2007 to Delphi 2009, and from Delphi 5 to Delphi 2006/2007

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/26

Oosterkamp training | consultancy (the company that I used to co-own before partnering in better office benelux), together with Barnsten (the CodeGear / Embarcadero representative in the benelux) organized a Delphi 2009 interactive briefing on the evening of April 1st, 2009.

That wasn’t a joke, and we had good attendance with interesting questions.

I did a session on migrating to the most current Delphi version.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Briefing, Delphi, Development, Event, Software Development | 1 Comment »

Delphi – finding out the design-time package name of a unit

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/24

Somehow I keep forgetting this ‘be aware though’ part below, hence this blog post :-)
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When you are developing packages, sometimes you need units that are part of the VCL/RTL source tree.
Normally when compiling such a package, Delphi suggests the depending VCL/RTL package to add to your required package list.
However, that does not always work, especially with design-time packages (those start with ‘dcl’ in stead of ‘vcl’).

The last time I bumped into this was when I developed a package that needed the MessageDigest_5 unit.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Package Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Delphi – adding for … in support to TPageControl

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/22

A long time ago, the for ... in statement was added to the structured statements part of the Delphi language. It is a really powerful statement, that allows for code like this:

var
  Line: string;
begin
  for Line in MyMemo.Lines do
    // some business logic
end;

in stead of using the traditional for statement which needs an extra LineIndex variable and an assignment statement:

var
  LineIndex: Integer;
  Line: string;
begin
  for LineIndex := 0 to MyMemo.Lines.Count do
  begin
    Line := MyMemo.Lines[LineIndex];
    // some business logic
  end;
end;

So, “for … in” is a cool feature, but now I wanted to do the same for a TPageControl:
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »

Speaking @ DelphiLive ’09, May 13-16, San Jose

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/21

I’ll be speaking during DelphiLive ’09 that is held from May 13-16 in San Jose (CA, USA, not any of the other San Jose cities).

This is going to be a top event with really knowledgeable Delphi speakers from all over the world.
Besides the 2 sessions that I’m doing, I’ll be hanging around as are the other speakers.

So feel free to approach us, and learn from the things we learned. Or teach us something new: all of us are eager to learn as well as teach!

The downloads are now available.

Posted in Conferences, Database Development, Delphi, Development, Event, InterBase, Software Development | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »