Toronto Delphi Users Group

Rick Scheibl will be giving us an introduction to MongoDB and Node.js and how to use these with Delphi.

It’s an ambitious presentation that covers a lot of material. I’m looking forward to learning more options for my multi-tier applications.

From Rick’s notes:

Part 1
nosql, MongoDB in particular. Using it via the Mongo Shell to create a database and work with some documents.

Part 2
a) Very simple Node.js app with two routes, one to use on the Web and one to use from a Delphi app to update the web.
b) creating a Delphi app to access the newly created REST interface to update the Node.js web app.

MongoDB is a well known, open source, NoSQL database with outstanding performance and well suited for structured document storage.

Node.js, which is also open source, uses JavaScript (yes, JavaScript) to let you build fast and scalable server applications.

Tuesday, February 28th, 2017
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4 (4th floor)
6:00PM to 8:00PM

About the location: The Fairview Library is on the north side of the Fairview Mall. Subway service is available and parking at the mall is free.

Since its release on February 14th, 1995, there have been 23 major releases of Delphi with more features than you can shake a stick at. So you can be forgiven for missing some of them, even if you make a point of paying attention. In particular, there have been a lot of new productivity features that might help make your life easier.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; My personal favourite IDE productivity feature has to be IDE Insight.

One feature we discussed but didn’t have tome to demonstrate was MultiPaste. As it turns out, Nick Hodges just blogged about it.

Here are some links to more resources:

• IDE Documentation: Keyboard Mappings Index
• Embarcadero webinar: Maximize IDE Productivity
• Cary Jensen: Delphi Editor Key Combination Table
• Brian Long: IDE Productivity Tips & Techniques

In our January meeting we will cover as many Delphi tips, tricks and productivity helpers as we can squeeze in to two hours. Everything from new features that you might not have used yet to those hidden gems that have you might have missed.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Tuesday, January 24th, 2017
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4 (4th floor)
6:00PM to 8:00PM

About the location: The Fairview Library is on the north side of the Fairview Mall. Subway service is available and parking at the mall is free.

Happy new year!

Our first meeting of 2017 will be in a couple of weeks. We don’t have a concrete topic yet, so any suggestions are more than welcome. We’ll post more details when they are available.

I hope you join us.

Tuesday, January 24th, 2017
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4 (4th floor)
6:00PM to 8:00PM

This will be our last meeting for 2016 as we will be taking a break in December for Christmas.

This month we will be reviewing our past several meetings on best practices, adding a few more and answering your questions. This includes source control, automated builds, unit testing and more.

We will also talk about topics for meetings in the new year.

I hope to see you there.

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4 (4th floor)
6:00PM to 8:00PM

About the location: The Fairview Library is on the north side of the Fairview Mall. Subway service is available and parking is free. Our September, October and November meetings will be at this location.

We walked through a concrete example and, as usual, branched off on to a bunch of different tangents in the discussion. I love it when that happens. 🙂

Here are some links to things that were discussed:

As mentioned last month, DUnitX ships with Delphi now, but supports versions as far back as D2010. If you are using a version older than XE8, it’s available from their web site. Whether you use DUnit or DUnitX, TestInsight is a great free companion tool that shows you your test results directly in the IDE.

Embarcadero is offering Delphi 10.1 Berlin for free again, and don’t forget the free boot camp. I’m not sure how long the free offer will last, but the serial number doesn’t expire, so go grab one quickly.

There is also a C++ Builder offer and boot camp available. If you’re in to that kind of thing.

If you are looking for more training material, a fair number of Delphi books have been published, some of which are available as free e-books. Some are mentioned here, here and here.

Finally, we talked about Delphi jobs. One of the go-to sites has always been Monster, but another interesting site is EngineerJobs, which aggregates technical jobs.

And, as always, if you are looking for Delphi developers, consider posting a job ad to the TDUG Jobs page.

Last month we talked about the history and terminology of unit testing and went over a couple of examples.

This month we will continue the discussion and walk through a concrete example using DUnitX.

I would also like to hear you questions and experiences about unit testing.

Tuesday, October 25th, 2016
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4 on the 4th floor
6:00PM to 8:00PM

About the location: The Fairview Library is on the north side of the Fairview Mall. Subway service is available and parking is free. Our September, October and November meetings will be at this location.

This was the first half of our discussion on unit testing. We talked about the history, some of the common terminology and some different use cases where it would be useful.

Next month we will continue with a concrete example to demonstrate how you would use TDD.

DUnitX is a free and open source project started by VSoft Technologies and has become the standard for unit testing in Delphi. It supports Delphi 2010 and later and has been bundled with the product since Delphi XE8.

DUnitX uses console based output by default and includes experimental GUI based output for VCL and FireMonkey in their demos, but they recommend using TestInsight, another free project that lets you run your unit tests in the Delphi IDE.

If you are using a version of Delphi that’s earlier than Delphi 2010, you can still use DUnit, which supports Delphi 5 and up (Delphi 4 if you go back far enough) and has also shipped with Delphi since Delphi 2005.

Free stuff!

Embarcadero is offering both Delphi and C++ Builder 10.1 starter editions for free for a limited time. I don’t know how long the offer will last, but the serial numbers don’t expire, so if you want to get a license, go grab one. If you don’t have one, you will need to sign up for an EDN (Embarcadero Developer Network) account.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/promotional-download
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter/promotional-download