Fido Library documentation

The Fido library has been created to make the life of a Delphi developer easier by following the "describe behavior instead of coding it, whenever is possible" design principle.

The Fido library is highly opinionated but it won't force you to adopt it entirely, you can just use the virtual database, or the virtual client API or the JSON marshalling/unmarshalling, if you feel like.

The Fido library is mostly based on composition and attributes, hence it won't force you to revolutionize your current base hierarchy structure.

The Fido library maintainers believe in constant improvement. For this reason, when confronted with the choice between “preserve backward compatibility” and “add a new feature”, we will move forward. Sorry, people who’re still using Delphi 7.

The Fido library supports Delphi version 10.4.1 and higher.

Fido Demo App is a forever-work-in-progress showcase of the functionalities of this library.

FidoBittrex shows how powerful is the Client API feature and how easy is to support a full blown 3rd party API (both REST and websockets).

Acknowledgements

Fido library was born, with a different name and different scopes, several years ago. In one of its many incarnations it has been used and improved while I was employed at one of the biggest online shops of the Netherlands, and it's during that time that it bloomed to most of its functionalities.

And it was working with amazing people that gave me the inspiration. You will notice that the Fido library makes extensive usage of the TVirtualInterface class, and for this I want to thank my great friend and amazing developer Michal Kulczycki. He is the guy who came up with the idea of using "Virtual things" to describe behavior instead of coding it, and wrote the first implementation of the virtual statement. I just tagged along and added bits and pieces.

He is also the guy behind the observer/(delegate)observable implementation.

Contributing

Help is always welcome and appreciated, and I will embrace any good idea that comes this way.

But remember that this library was born because I couldn't find anything around that was working the way I wanted, so I won't accept PRs that try to change the nature of the library, that is:

• Describe behavior instead of coding it, whenever is possible.
• Use composition as much as possible and avoid class hierarchies. Anyone should be able to start with the library without the need to change and rewrite their own codebase.
• Think (as a library designer) about your user (the developer). Clear and elegant interfaces and, if possible, one single way to achieve a result.

If you are willing to play by the rules then let's have fun together.

Dependencies

The Fido library depends on the following open source libraries:

Spring4D (develop branch)

Delphi JOSE and JWT Library

DUnitX

Delphi Redis client (Optional)

Brook framework (Optional)

Zeos DB components (Optional)

Installation

1. clone the source to a location of your choice
2. Create a system environment variable FIDOLIB pointing to the fidolib\source folder
3. Go to Delphi menu -> Tools -> Options... -> Delphi Options -> Library
4. add $(FIDOLIB);$(FIDOLIB)\Actions;$(FIDOLIB)\Adapter;$(FIDOLIB)\Binding;$(FIDOLIB)\Collections;$(FIDOLIB)\Db;$(FIDOLIB)\DesignPatterns;$(FIDOLIB)\Environment;$(FIDOLIB)\Events;$(FIDOLIB)\Http;$(FIDOLIB)\Interfaces;$(FIDOLIB)\Json;$(FIDOLIB)\JWT;$(FIDOLIB)\Logging;$(FIDOLIB)\Model;$(FIDOLIB)\Resources;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Client;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Client\ElasticSearch;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Client\ElasticSearch\Dto;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Client\VirtualApi;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Server;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Server\Resources;$(FIDOLIB)\Testing;$(FIDOLIB)\VirtualStatement;$(FIDOLIB)\Web\Server;$(FIDOLIB)\Web\Server\WebSocket;$(FIDOLIB)\Web\Client\WebSocket;$(FIDOLIB)\Api\Client\Consul;$(FIDOLIB)\Consul;$(FIDOLIB)\Consul\UseCases;$(FIDOLIB)\KVStore;$(FIDOLIB)\EventsDriven;$(FIDOLIB)\Redis;$(FIDOLIB)\Consul\Gateways;$(FIDOLIB)\Caching to the Library path (for all the available platforms.

Building

1. Open the FidoLibGroup.groupproj
2. Build all the projects

The packages

The Fido Library is made of 4 main packages

• FidoCore - Contains the core functionalities that are not linked or dependent on any specific OS.
• FidoFireDac - Contains the FireDAC implementation of the DB interfaces.
• FidoZeos - Contains the Zeos implementation of the DB interfaces. Please notice that the PageLimit and PagingOffset attributes are not supported.
• FidoAdo - Contains the ADO implementation of the DB interfaces. Please notice that the PageLimit and PagingOffset attributes are not supported.
• FidoGui/FidoVcl/FidoFmx - Contains the functionalities related to the UI, such as the binding of view models to VCL and FireMonkey components.
• FidoRedis - Contains the Redis implementations for the IKVStore, IDistribuitedEventsQueueProducer and IDistribuitedEventsQueueConsumer interfaces.
• FidoBrook - Contains the Brook implementations for the IApiServerinterface. As mentioned on their page: Brook [...] core has been developed using the Sagui library, that's why it is so fast, compact and useful to run on embedded systems. Please refer on their page to get access to their external libraries.