Delphi Training Courses

Pre-requisites

Minimum of 6 months experience using Delphi. Our Delphi Part I - Fundamentals training course also provides a solid foundation for this course.

Course Benefits

Students will learn the correct way to apply object oriented programming principles to the development of Delphi applications. Students learn how to develop generic forms, objects and components, which they can reuse in multiple applications, saving development time, increasing program reliability, and improving maintainability. Students will be more productive after completing this class. They will learn how to develop Delphi applications in less time, and which are more reliable, consistent, and maintainable. Although the class 100% targets Delphi, the general principles taught here are equally applicable to other object oriented languages.

You Will Learn How To

• Create Delphi classes & components which you can reuse in multiple applications
• Real classes - such as database maintenance forms & query builders - the backbone of database applications
• Design class hierarchies which are stable, robust, & extensible
• Create components from scratch & also extend existing components which come w/ Delphi
• Learn from design decisions made in the VCL
• Create real business objects - such as customers & invoices
• Place class wrappers around database tables to minimize the impact of database structure & business logic changes

Course Content

Principles of Object Oriented Programming
Classes & Objects defined | Why OOP is better than structured/procedural programming | Rules on what makes a good OOP design | What makes a good class? | Telling a good class design from a bad one | Interface vs. implementation

UML Basics
What is UML & why use it? | How to read a UML class drawing (classes, methods, properties, events, scoping, inheritance/encapsulation)

Delphi Syntax
Using predefined classes | Objects & Classes - what's the difference? | Declaring objects | Using Try/Finally to prevent memory leaks | Instantiating classes | Using properties & methods | TStringList in detail | TInifile & TRegistry| Hooking events in code

Defining your own classes
Class design basics | Classes are types | Using properties | Declaring & implementing methods | Method & instance variable scope | Constructors & destructors

Using OOP to solve common development problems
User security | Recovering from database errors | Loading forms | Printing or previewing reports | Restoring forms when application starts

Using Visual Form Inheritance
Understanding the Delphi generated code | Using the repository | Removing duplicate code from forms | Building reusable form hierarchies | Automating database maintenance forms

Building More Advanced Objects
Inheritance | Encapsulation | Polymorphism | Virtual, Dynamic, Override, Abstract | Composite classes | Friend classes | Copying objects

Component Writing
Tour of the VCL | Writing classes which work within the IDE | Using Delphi 5 frames to visually build composite components | Wrappers around dialog boxes | Extending VCL components | Data aware components | Implementing custom events

Creating Business Objects
Using class wrappers around database classes | Create data aware business objects | Implementing business logic as custom events

• Using visual form inheritance to reduce development time and create consistent and reliable user interfaces
• Create a generic database form which allows users to add / edit / delete records etc. which works with any database
• Create a generic query builder to be used as a front end to reports and ad-hoc browse screens
• Create components from scratch which can be used within the Delphi IDE
• Create components based upon existing VCL components
• Develop real business objects with custom events
• Create classes which can be used in any project