What this book covers

Chapter 1, Delphi Basics, talks about a set of general approaches that should not be ignored by any Delphi programmer. Some topics are simple and immediate and some are not but all of them should be well understood. By the end of this chapter, the reader is able to use some of the fundamental Delphi techniques related to the RTL, to the VCL, and to the OS integration.

Chapter 2, Becoming a Delphi Language Ninja, focuses on the Object Pascal language. The programming language is the way you talk to the machine, so you must be fluent and know all the possibilities offered. This chapter talks about higher-order functions, practical utilization of the extended RTTI, regular expressions, and other things useful to augment the power of your code and to lower the amount of time spent on debugging.

Chapter 3, Knowing Your Friends – the Delphi RTL, focuses on the Delphi' RTL. There isn't a detailed description of all the Delphi's RTLs (you would need 10 books like this one, which will be particularly boring, I guess) but you can find some recipes that explain some of the most important RTL features and some less know but really useful classes. You'll learn how to use regular expressions, the most popular encoding format used by HTTP base applications, and how to use the built-in data de/compression-related classes.

Chapter 4, Going Cross-Platform with FireMonkey, is dedicated to the FireMonkey framework in general. What you will learn from this chapter can be used in many of the platforms that FireMonkey supports. Moreover, you will learn about non-trivial LiveBindings utilizations.

Chapter 5, The Thousand Faces of Multithreading, talks about thread synchronization and the mechanisms used to obtain this synchronization, such as TMonitor, thread-safe queues, and TEvent. It is also one of the most complex chapters. By the end of this chapter, the reader will be able to create and communicate with background threads, leaving your main thread free to update your GUI (or to communicate with the OS).

Chapter 6, Putting Delphi on the Server, focuses on how well Delphi can behave when running on a server. Some people think that Delphi is a client-only tool, but it is not true. In this chapter, we'll show how to create powerful servers that offer services over a network. Then, in some recipe, we'll also implement a JavaScript client that brings the database data into the user browser. Techniques explained in this chapter open a range of possibilities, especially in the mobile and web area.

Chapter 7, Riding the Mobile Revolution with FireMonkey, is dedicated to the mobile development with Delphi and FireMonkey. If you are interested in mobile development, I think that will be your favorite chapter! Mobile is everywhere, and this chapter will explain how to write software for your Android or iOS device, what are the best practices to use, how to save your data on the mobile, how to retrieve and update remote data, and how to integrate with the mobile operating system.

Chapter 8, Using Specific Platform Features, shows you how to integrate your app with the underlying mobile operating systems beyond what FireMonkey offers. You will learn how to import Java and Objective C libraries in your app and how to use the SDK classes from your Object Pascal code.