Category Archives: Level

Articles for different levels of developers

Beginner, Intermediate, Objective Pascal

How to convert an object to JSON and back with a single line of code

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Ever wanted to take an Object into a format that is easily persisted and back? Well now you can. New in XE6 is the REST.JSON unit. This allows you access to TJSON a class with some very helpful class methods. Using TJSON you can convert an object to a JSON string and back with a little help from generics along the way.

The following code uses a class called TFoo that has a Foo and a Fee property (string and Integer) Using TJson you can then see how to covert the object to a string and back ready for storage, transport etc.

uses REST.JSON; // Also new System.JSON
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  Foo: TFoo;
begin
  Foo := TFoo.Create;
  try
    Foo.Foo := 'Hello World';
    Foo.Fee := 42;
    Memo1.Lines.Text := TJson.ObjectToJsonString(Foo);
  finally
    Foo.Free;
  end;
  Foo := TJson.JsonToObject<TFoo>(Memo1.Lines.Text);
  try
    Foo.Fee := 100;
    Memo1.Lines.Add(TJson.ObjectToJsonString(Foo));
  finally
    Foo.Free;
  end;
end;

If you want to watch this being demo’ed this very show video shows it in action http://youtu.be/TSqWoFvjj5g

Intermediate, Objective Pascal

Remote Object Persistence with Parse and Kinvey

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New BaaS components introduced in RAD Studio XE6 now make it easily to use remote data storage services offered by Kinvey and Parse along with Push notifications, File Storage and user authentication.

This can greatly reduce the infrastructure that you need to code, develop and manage with your application which speeds up time to market for including these features and can drastically reduce cost.

In the typical RAD, Object Orientated style there are a set of new interfaces behind the scenes that are implemented by new provider components that hook into the core components that work across providers, allowing you to code this effort once and work with it over Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

In this short introduction video you will see how to work with the remote data store as an object persistence layer, learn about the new TBackendObjectList that contains the objects along with TBackendEntityValue to give you unique ID’s for each object without having to code that yourself, which is very cool indeed!

The video uses demo code that is in code central, submission 29846. NOTE: You will need to have a Kinvey or Parse account to use the demo, but a suitable accounts is quick and free to setup.