Table Of Content

To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles. Kick Ass Delphi Programming (Publisher: The Coriolis Group) Author(s): Don Taylor, Jim Mischel, John Penman, Terence Goggin ISBN: 1576100448 Publication Date: 09/01/96 Brief Full Advanced Search this book: Search Search Tips Introduction What's on the CD-ROM About the Authors CHAPTER 1—32-Bit Console Applications Console Applications Filters Console Applications and Delphi Hello, Delphi Saving a Program Template Console Input and Output Filter Programs in Delphi Your Basic Filter Program Processing the Command Line Command Line Options A Reusable Command Line Parser Testing the CmdLine Unit A Note on Program Structure Reading and Writing Files Using the Filter Template A Critique CHAPTER 2—Drag and Drop the Windows Way Drag and Drop the Windows Way What to Do with Windows Code? Responding to Windows Messages Custom Controls Subclassing Defining the Interface Implementing the New Interface Subclassing Revisited The Elusive Drag and Drop Server CHAPTER 3—32-Bit Delphi DLLs—When, Why, How What’s a DLL and Why Do I Want One? How Do I Do It? Building a DLL Calling DLL Functions Linking DLLs at Runtime Where Windows Looks for DLLs DLLs: Disadvantages and Cautions Creating Forms in DLLs Coding for Flexibility Creating the Text Editor Sharing Memory Between Applications The DLLProc Variable Movin On! CHAPTER 4—The Delphi Winsock Component What Is Winsock? Dissecting WSock Running the Resolver Application What’s My Name? What’s the Address? What’s Your Name? Getting the Name Asynchronously Who’s at This Address? Canceling a WSAAsync Operation Resolving Ports and Services Finding the Service Resolving Protocols To Block or Not CHAPTER 5—Shopper: An FTP Client Component Are You Being Served? The Shopper Component Displaying Output Putting Shopper to Work Odds and Ends CHAPTER 6—3D Fractal Landscapes Bending and Dividing The Shared Edges Problem A Triangular Array Bending Draw, Then Display Generating and Displaying the Landscape The Project() Routine Outline Mode Filled Mode Rendered Mode Create Your Own Worlds CHAPTER 7—Problems with Persistents, and Other Advice Reading to Write? Reasonable Workarounds A Little Perspective Using RDTSC for Pentium Benchmarking Drag-and-Drop Rectangles for a Delphi Listbox Making String Collections More List-Like Letting Delphi Applications Set Up Themselves Using INHERITED with Redeclared Properties in Delphi Taking Snapshots of the Screen with Delphi Delphi RadioGroup Buttons You Can Disable CHAPTER 8—Animated Screen Savers in Delphi Secrets of the Main Form Adapting to the Environment and the User Idle Work Animation Callback Functions Configuration A Color ComboBox The Project File CHAPTER 9—The Shadowy Math Unit Three Good Reasons to Use the Math Unit Dynamic Data and Static Declarations Creating TDBStatistics Defining the Component’s Tasks Getting Access to the Data Storing Data Locally Extracting data Making the Data Available Test Driving the DBStatistics Component Bugs in the Math Unit Poly: The Function That Got Away Filling the Pascal Power Gap Math Unit Function Summary Trigonometric Functions and Procedures Arithmetic Functions and Procedures Financial Functions and Procedures Statistical Functions and Procedures CHAPTER 10—Dynamic User Interfaces An Example “UI-It-Yourself” Application Building-in a “Delphi” for Your Users Moving Controls Re-sizing Controls Responding to the Popup Menu Abandoning Changes Changing the Tab Order at Runtime Changing Other Properties Changing Control Fonts at Runtime Changing Properties in an Object Inspector Saving Component Changes Made at Runtime Snag: Components with Components as Properties Alternate Paths to a Stream Toward More Flexible User Interfaces CHAPTER 11—Hierarchical Data in Relational Databases One-to-Many Hierarchies Simple Recursive Hierarchical Data Class TQuery as a Detail DataSet Nested Recursive Hierarchical Data Hierarchy Navigation Displaying the Data Using the Data Finding Rows Using Hierarchical Data in Queries Referential Integrity and Circular References Using SQL Solving the Problem of Arbitrary Nesting Using Stored Procedures The TreeData Components TreeData Property Management TreeData Component Internals TreeDataComboBox TreeDataListBox TreeDataOutline and TreeDataUpdate End Note CHAPTER 12—The Oracle Vanishes An Evening at the Office An Urgent Plea The Disappearance At the “Sleeveless Arms” Doing the Old ‘Drag/Drop’ Kind of a Drag Dropping the Payload Packing Paradox and dBASE Tables The Packing Demo Back at Ace’s Office Different Strokes Playing a .WAV File Some Sound Advice A Disconcerting Discovery CHAPTER 13—A Revelation in the Mud Resizing Forms Making a Splash Ace Gets an Answer Making Data Global to an Application An Exciting Discovery! Taking Win95 for a Walk Just Say “Cheese” The WalkStuf Unit Stepping Out CHAPTER 14—The Oracle Returns Sharing Event Handlers Taking a First Run Down a Crooked Path Just One More Thing… Using Memory Files Before the Beginning Preventing Program Execution Floating Toolbars Ace Gets the Goods Epilogue CHAPTER 15—An Age-Old Problem Facing the Situation Specifying the Problem Designing the DLL Startup Code Signals from a Semaphore Shutdown Code Examining the DLL Routines Creating the Sender Component Creating the Receiver Component Subclassing the Owner Window Other Interesting Stuff Creating a Receiver Demo Creating a Sender Demo A Rude Awakening Index Products | Contact Us | About Us | Privacy | Ad Info | Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Read EarthWeb's privacy statement. To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles. Kick Ass Delphi Programming (Publisher: The Coriolis Group) Author(s): Don Taylor, Jim Mischel, John Penman, Terence Goggin ISBN: 1576100448 Publication Date: 09/01/96 Brief Full Advanced Search this book: Search Search Tips Table of Contents Introduction Way, way back in the mid-to-late 80s, the Pascal programming language was the target of a systematic slander attack by C and (later) C++ partisans, who got the ear of the media and said “Pascal is a kiddie language” so often that the media chowderheads took their word for it. Most of these people knew nothing of Pascal, or perhaps took a college-level course in it from other chowderheads who considered drop-in code portability the sole virtue in all computer science. So the Pascal taught in schools is typically castrated Pascal that can’t do much more than iterate arrays and talk to the command line. C is no more portable than Pascal, but…c’mon, already: The whole issue is ridiculous because portability is and always was a myth. Quick, you C gurus: Write me a single, library-free C program that will locate the text cursor to 0,0 on any C implementation on any platform. See what I mean? No es posible. Arguing about portability is about as useful as discussing where UFOs come from. A better measure of a language is how much it can accomplish—and how productive it makes the programmer. There was a time when C++ had a slight edge in power. But then Borland got hold of Pascal and added everything of value that C++ had. The “kiddie language” now had typecasts, pointers, objects, inline assembly, special hooks for Windows, the “woiks.” Those of us who used Pascal immediately leapt on the additional features, and before you knew it there were hordes of highly sophisticated applications everywhere you looked, all written in Borland Pascal. Sometimes you can’t win. The C++ guys snorted and looked the other way, and the media chowderheads still call Pascal a kiddie language. It got so bad that a lot of commercial software vendors were afraid to admit that their applications were written in Pascal. So Borland did the right thing. They dumped the P-word. Delphi, when it happened, stood on its own merits. It wasn’t a language. It was a lean, mean, program-building machine. The sheer depth of the Delphi product is astonishing—you can wander for months in the help system and not see the same entry twice. The potential in all that power was slow to be understood. We’re only now starting to appreciate what you can do in Delphi. This book is meant to be a compendium of truly advanced Delphi techniques—stuff you can’t do in a kiddie language, and stuff that isn’t a cakewalk even in C++. It’s proof, now and for all time, that Delphi goes all the way down to the metal and back in creating professional applications for Windows as good as anything you can create in any language you can name. Having lost the P-word to kick around, the media chowderheads have begun repeating a new mantra, that anything you can do in Delphi takes five or six times as long in C++. It’s gotten so bad I’ve heard tell of MIS shops where managers are forbidding the use of C++ and replacing it with Delphi and Visual Basic. Hey, pass the chowder. There may yet be justice. Jeff Duntemann KG7JF Scottsdale, Arizona July, 1996 Table of Contents Products | Contact Us | About Us | Privacy | Ad Info | Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Read EarthWeb's privacy statement. To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles. Kick Ass Delphi Programming (Publisher: The Coriolis Group) Author(s): Don Taylor, Jim Mischel, John Penman, Terence Goggin ISBN: 1576100448 Publication Date: 09/01/96 Brief Full Advanced Search this book: Search Search Tips Table of Contents What’s on the CD-ROM The CD-ROM in this book exists primarily to carry the code listings for the projects developed in the book. However, there’s so much room on a CD-ROM that we’ve added a lot of additional material that we felt might be useful to you as a Delphi programmer. All of the projects have been tested on a 32-bit Windows operating system, either Windows 95 or Windows NT. Some will also work under Windows 3.x, but some may not. When a choice had to be made, we chose the 32-bit side of things. If you have trouble getting one of the project executables to run, recompile it under Delphi 2. (Not all projects will compile under Delphi 1.) Make sure you have database aliases set up for projects that require them. Listing File Updates Every so often a source code file may have to be updated. It isn’t always a matter of bugs. Sometimes, an author will send us an update that improves the code or adds new features, even if no bugs are involved. So check now and then! Typically, we’ll provide an updated ZIP for the project in question rather than an update of the entire CD-ROM. Book disk update files are available most easily through ftp, from: ftp://ftp.coriolis.com/pub/bookdisk There will be subdirectories for many books there. Look for a subdirectory name corresponding to KickAss Delphi. That’s where the update files will be. The CD-ROM Directory Structure