Hi,

I've just purcased Borland Delphi 7.0 Personal, as I've have an idea to an publication that I wish to create. But I seemed much more complicated than I was expected.

I've been working with webdesigning for several years, and also PHP programming, but never worked with any core programming applications like this.

My question is as follow. Do anyone have any expirence about Delphi, and do any knows where to find turtorials or even better samples, as I really like to try this out and then further as it looks funny and cool.

My application idea is something like an booking system, actually more like an riding horse competition application manager, and I would like to connect it into an database and if it could work mysql database, as I also would like it to generate dynamicaly websites, that should be updated directly from the database.

Is this too complictated for delphi or too complicated generally, or do there exist some other easier way to do surch application.

I hope that someone is awail to help me here, and probably starting an forum for delphi programming.

Thanks

Cheers!

Jens



This post has been edited by microscopic^earthling: Apr 12 2005, 01:58 PM

    [/tab]I don't have much idea of Delphi - though I've seen a lot of friends work on it. What I felt is it's pretty damned easy to accomplish your objective with Delphi. It operates somewhat on the same lines as MS Visual Studio - you've a whole bunch of graphics widgets (buttons, textfields, radio-buttons, checkboxes etc.) which you can drag and drop onto a form and rapidly come up with an interface. Linking these to a database is no hassle at all, bcoz Delphi has been specifically designed for that - to create frontends to a wide variety of databases.

[tab]As far as I know, the language used for writing code in Delphi is Object Pascal - which is the object oriented variety of Pascal. Since you're familiar with programming (PHP) - shifting over to pascal wouldn't be difficult at all. Except for strong types (i.e. you've to declare each and every variable to be of a particular data type like integer, double etc. before you can use them) - the flow of code should be quite akin to PHP. The keywords not quite the same - you'll have to learn all the pascal keywords.

    I think moonwitch has prior experience in Delphi and probably she can help you out here. Waitup and see who else is into delphi and if we get a lot of interesting threads on it - starting a new forum isn't a problem at all

All the best

it is pretty easy to achieve what ever you generally want in Delphi, i learned it in College although most of it on my own time . I have a few sites for you ones we got from college:

http://www.swissdelphicenter.ch/torry/ - This has a lot of tips and code samples about many many things and alot on Databases.

http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/ - This one is very good, it doesn't really offer any downloads of code samples, but it has alot of information about Types, Structures, Files and Units and has practically every Type and its descendents you could use.

http://www.delphi-central.com/ - many tutorials, tips

I don't know many websites for you as I have never actually used them, being as it was for college i learnt from books and examples we got at college. What you want to do is possible but may take a little patients and knowledge on your part for connection functions and so on.

p.s. have you used the examples which have come with Delphi. if you go into the Borland program folder and click on Delphi 7 then on Demos you will see all of the examples and executable files with full code which you can run and change which will probably help you alot.

if you have done PHP before then this may come easier to you like M^E said. If you find something difficult in the future or require some help on this project then feel free to send me a message or some one else if they have more knowledge which will most likely happen on here lol.

good luck

overture

Hi,

Thanks alot for many useful hits..:-) I can promise that I would came again with several more requests in this new forum, as at the beginning does Delphi looks like something that could be useful for me, and for my future creating of applications. But I can imagine that I would have alot of both works and also learning to do b4 that I would be able to create my first serious creation.

What I also did search for was the possiblity to connect an Delphi program into an MySQL database, and combine it into an PHP site. So if any have surch expirence, PLEASE come arround. As I think that it would be useful and funny to try out.

Anyway thanks again and have a very nice weekend.

Cheers,

Jens

At the moment I don't have Delphi on my system (I used 6, which we got in school). But to connect a Delphi program with a MySQL database to then generate dynamic pages in php.. seems a bit tricky for a beginner. I may have some experience, but I never connected to a MySQL database, we wrote things such as text editors, games, accountancy programs. (Drop dead boring!)

I would think you'd be best off sticking to a webbased interface, and using php or perhaps JavaScript. That may make it way more simple to achieve what you want. Now as far as Delphi and PHP being similar, somewhat yes. JavaScript is closer to Delphi (from what I've seen in JS)

What I recommend to use with great care is indentation! (really, after typing for ages and working with 10 others on a project on CVS you NEED to use that LOL).. Also for declarations, functions etc..

function Button1.onClick (tObject)
if Label1.Caption := 10
    [/tab]beep
[tab]    [/tab]else
[tab]showMessage("Blegh");

Or something like that (I just typed this of the cuff, so I can be wrong. But use caps when you're handcoding. You will learn to love it (oh and uhm Classic or Twilight are good colour schemes)

Hi,

I was in and looking into these recomanded sites, and it seemed to contains many interesting and useful things. But I would be happy if any could give some hints to explain how to connect or link diffrent applications into eachother surch as an mysql databas and then generate dynamicaly sites builded on surch of tempelates included styles etc.

As mentioned before do I really want to learn this, as I think that I can use much more out of it in the future.

See you all....
Cheers!

Jens

Whoo, there's plenty wrong with that but I won't bug you about it unless you specifically state you want me to bug you about it.





Hehe, sorry, I won't do it again...

You can get source code of this software made in Delphi HERE

Any kind of Delphi questions/help you need please feel free to contact me. I do this as a profession and in my spare time and have honed my skills for quite some time now.

Regards, Digital Technic.

Thumbs up to the user who recommended delphibasics.co.uk, it's a really great starting point for beginners and is a great reference for Delphi programmers of any experience level.

Also for a great Delphi help forum you should take a look at http://www.delphipages.com/threads, the experts there are really helpfull and using the forums search capabilities you will find most simple and even some complex and out of the way answers to your questions.

Hope you enjoy Delphi, it's always good to see someone else giving it a try.

EDIT: Also about that application you desire to program, I would highly recommend using plain text files for storage first even if just for a basic program so you can get used to how it works and the general workings of programming in Delphi.

delphibasics.co.uk mentioned above has a great basic tutorial on playing with text files which is what I learnt from myself. The delphipages forum I mentioned above should have lots of information on what you can use for database programming and how to use it.

This post has been edited by Chesso: Apr 18 2006, 01:12 PM