Yaron

I eventually created an auto-executing HTML form and used TWebBrowser.LoadFromStrings() to load the HTML and automatically login. I even made the login 'pretty' by having the form hidden and showing a logo with a CSS based "processing" animation. The end result looks smooth & professional.

I'm wondering if there's a release date planned, I hate installing Delphi each time, takes a while to get everything re-configured on a clean install and doing in-place upgrades has been hit & miss for me.

I'm doing something similar and encountered some of the same issues. 1. Since ISAPI is a DLL, did you add "IsMultiThread := True;" to let the memory manager know this DLL is using multiple threads (otherwise you can get random-seeming crashes)? 2. I'm not sure your logging code is thread safe, it might be useful to add a critical section to your log writes. 3. There should be no problem using global read-only variables across threads as long as these variables are not classes that do things in the background. 4. If you're accessing a database, make sure to use connection pooling. 5. Do you get a ~90sec freeze when trying to stop the application pool? Make sure to terminate the ISAPI dll correctly. This is my original thread in which the nice people of this forum helped me identify some of these issues:

I believe I might be able login by using LoadFromStrings() to feed the html form and auto-activating JS to TWebBrowser with the form's action set to my login url, which will bypass the need to actually modify the html content.

I have already written a Delphi ISAPI DLL that hooks into the microsoft IIS server and outputs HTML/JS/CSS. That part is done and working well in all browsers. Now, for convenience I would like to create a separate Android app (using Delphi) that uses the TWebBrowser component to open the web server's URL and automatically log-in by filling in the html form fields (user/pass) and press the "submit" button. With this second part I'm struggling since I don't know how to get to the HTML content displayed by the TWebBrowser component and how to trigger the form's "submit" button.

I'm not sure I understand you, do you mean to write the Android app in ReactNative instead of Delphi? I don't have any experience with ReactNative, that's why I'm trying to use Delphi to simply wrap the html generated by my back-end code in a TWebBrowser component.

The Delphi back-end is already rest-based, but the whole point of using HTML/JS for the front-end is to avoid having to design the UI for each platform (web/desktop/android) and rely on CSS to style the UI for every device without having to deal with device resolution/scale within Delphi code.

You beat me to it, I just found this: https://mathiaspannier.wordpress.com/2016/07/17/how-to-properly-cleanupshutdown-a-delphi-isapi-which-uses-threads/ Which is essentially the same answer, can't close the connection in the finalization section when dealing with ISAPI.

Looks like I'm encountering an IIS issue when using this scheme. In the ISAPI's DLL's finalization code I call "FDManager.Close" and in IIS, when stopping the application pool associated with the DLL it can take ~60 seconds before I can restart the pool, any ideas? This is the error I get: When checking my logs, It doesn't seem to exit cleanly (the debug message that the "DB Closed" does not show up in the log), but there doesn't seem to be an exception, here's the code I use: Try FDManager.Close; Except on E : Exception do {$IFDEF TRACEDEBUG}AddDebugEntry('Exception disconnecting from DB : '+E.Message){$ENDIF}; End; {$IFDEF TRACEDEBUG}AddDebugEntry('DB Closed');{$ENDIF} When I run the same code locally as an EXE that handles the HTTP requests, there are no issues, any ideas?

Thank you! Took me a bit to understand the mechanics, but with your help I managed to rewrite the code with minimal changes and so far it's working. P.S. "FDManager.Active :=True;" no longer works in Delphi 10.3, it simply doesn't exist anymore, but "FDManager.Open" seems to be the replacement.

Does that mean that for every http request (that requires DB access) I have to create a new instance of TFDConnection and then connect to the DB? This is the first time I'm writing an ISAPI dll with DB access and the threading model is not exactly clear to me. My original (perhaps flawed) assumption was that IIS will load additional DLLs in separate threads to handle concurrent http requests. I would like to avoid the 100ms penalty for connecting to the DB on each request, any tips?

It took me hours of research to find the tools & documentation and haven't found any up-to-date text describing a similar process, so I decided to post my findings here in case someone else has the same requirement. I wrote (in Delphi) a simple windows service that runs the FireSQL "nbackup.exe" command line tool to create a DB backup every [x] hours using this command line: "c:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_3_0\nbackup.exe" -U SYSDBA -P [password] -B 0 "c:\path\database.FDB" "[output_file]" The windows service keeps [x] number of backup files (erasing old files) and creates a new backup every [y] minutes. Personally, I used 1 full-db backup per hour, covering an entire week (168 files). I then use the open-source SyncThing P2P file sync tool (also running as a windows service) to securely & automatically sync the DB backups with every PC assigned as off-site backup. 100% automated, secure, zero cost.

Not my quote: I basically used it cause that's the example I was able to find in the documentation for exporting the DB. In theory I could have used the windows task scheduler, but I needed more control and I'm using the service to perform other timed DB actions. And I couldn't just call nbackup directly from the task scheduler as I'm erasing old DB files and numbering new backups based on existing backup file names (a running counter in the file name) and some more logic is required for this.

SyncThing has a Linux/Mac/FreeBSD/etc... client, so in theory the off-site backups can be on pretty much any widely used OS.

To give me the largest work-space, I designed the Delphi IDE UI to look like the attached "delphi_before.jpg". However, under some conditions, windows throws apps a resize event (e.g. when turning on a secondary monitor), and then the Delphi IDE UI automatically changes to the attached "delphi_after.jpg" (the tool-bar drops down a row). Is there any way to lock the UI so my preferred layout remains fixed? P.S. This is on Win7 64bit.

This is a bit old, but I've been blocking the windows screen-saver for media playback in every version of windows since 1999. I'm actually handling several actions, first I capture the WM_POWERBROADCAST message in the form: procedure WMPOWERBROADCAST(var M : TMessage); message WM_POWERBROADCAST; const PBT_APMQUERYSUSPEND = $0000; PBT_APMQUERYSTANDBY = $0001; PBT_APMQUERYSUSPENDFAILED = $0002; PBT_APMQUERYSTANDBYFAILED = $0003; PBT_APMSUSPEND = $0004; PBT_APMSTANDBY = $0005; PBT_APMRESUMECRITICAL = $0006; PBT_APMRESUMESUSPEND = $0007; PBT_APMRESUMESTANDBY = $0008; PBT_APMBATTERYLOW = $0009; PBT_APMPOWERSTATUSCHANGE = $000A; PBT_APMOEMEVENT = $000B; PBT_APMRESUMEAUTOMATIC = $0012; begin Inherited; Case M.WParam of PBT_APMQUERYSUSPEND, PBT_APMSUSPEND : Begin If SystemSuspended = False then Begin SystemSuspended := True; End; End; PBT_APMRESUMEAUTOMATIC : Begin SystemSuspended := False; End; End; M.Result := Integer(True); end; Then on WinMsg (Application.OnMessage := WinMsg;) I do: procedure TMainForm.WinMsg(var Msg: TMsg; var Handled: Boolean); var ModWnd : HWnd; I : Integer; mPos : TPoint; begin If (Msg.Message = SC_SCREENSAVE) or (Msg.Message = SC_MONITORPOWER) then Begin Msg.wParam := 0; Msg.Message := SC_Move; Handled := True; End else If (Msg.Message = WM_SYSCOMMAND) then Begin Case Msg.WPARAM of SC_MONITORPOWER, SC_SCREENSAVE : Begin Msg.wParam := 0; Msg.Message := SC_Move; Handled := True; End; End; End; End; Then on WndProc ( procedure WndProc(var Msg : TMessage); override;) : Hope this helps.

Took your advice and created a QC report: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-26253

It's not an issue restoring the IDE, just a little drag on that line, but it happens about once or twice every day which is a bit annoying.

Using Delphi 10.3.2: I use the function below to send HTML eMails through Amazon SES using Indy. However, no matter what I tried, non-latin characters appear as "�" (for example, instead of "Oriënt Express", gMail displays "Ori�nt Express"). I need to be able to include non-latin characters in both the subject and the eMail's HTML body, what am I doing wrong? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but the HTML does contain "<meta charset="UTF-8">" in the "<HEAD>" block and I verified the source was properly encoded by saving it to a local utf8 html file which displays the encoded characters correctly. procedure SendEmailIndy( const SMTPServer: string; const SMTPPort: integer; const SMTPUserName : string; const SMTPPassword : string; const FromName, FromAddress: string; const ToAddresses: string; //comma "," separated list of e-mail addresses const CCAddresses: string; //comma "," separated list of e-mail addresses const BCCAddresses: string; //comma "," separated list of e-mail addresses const Subject: string; const EmailBody: string; const IsBodyHtml: Boolean; //verses Plain Text const Attachments: TStrings; UseTLS : Boolean); var smtp: TIdSMTP; // IdSmtp.pas TLSHandler : TIdSSLIOHandlerSocketOpenSSL; // TLS support msg: TidMessage; // IdMessage.pas builder: TIdCustomMessageBuilder; //IdMessageBuilder.pas s: string; emailAddress: string; begin TLSHandler := nil; msg := TidMessage.Create(nil); msg.ContentType := 'text/html'; msg.CharSet := 'UTF-8'; msg.ContentTransferEncoding := '8bit'; try if IsBodyHtml then begin builder := TIdMessageBuilderHtml.Create; TIdMessageBuilderHtml(builder).Html.Text := EmailBody; end else begin builder := TIdMessageBuilderPlain.Create; end; try Try if Attachments <> nil then for s in Attachments do builder.Attachments.Add(s); builder.FillMessage(msg); Except on E : Exception do {$IFDEF TRACEDEBUG}AddDebugEntry('Exception : '+E.Message){$ENDIF}; End; finally builder.Free; end; msg.From.Name := FromName; msg.From.Address := FromAddress; msg.Subject := Subject; //If the message is plaintext then we must fill the body outside of the PlainText email builder. //(the PlainTextBuilder is unable to build plaintext e-mail) if not IsBodyHtml then msg.Body.Text := EmailBody; for s in ToAddresses.Split([',']) do begin emailAddress := Trim(s); if emailAddress <> '' then begin with msg.recipients.Add do begin //Name := '<Name of recipient>'; Address := emailAddress; end; end; end; for s in CCAddresses.Split([',']) do begin emailAddress := Trim(s); if emailAddress <> '' then msg.CCList.Add.Address := emailAddress; end; for s in BCCAddresses.Split([',']) do begin emailAddress := Trim(s); if emailAddress <> '' then msg.BccList.Add.Address := emailAddress; end; smtp := TIdSMTP.Create(nil); try smtp.Host := SMTPServer; smtp.Port := SMTPPort; smtp.Username := SMTPUserName; smtp.Password := SMTPPassword; If UseTLS = True then Begin TLSHandler := TIdSSLIOHandlerSocketOpenSSL.Create; smtp.IOHandler := TLSHandler; smtp.UseTLS := TIdUseTLS.utUseRequireTLS; End; Try smtp.Connect; try try smtp.Send(msg) Except on E : Exception do {$IFDEF TRACEDEBUG}AddDebugEntry('SMTP Send Exception : '+E.Message){$ENDIF}; End; finally smtp.Disconnect; end; Except on E : Exception do {$IFDEF TRACEDEBUG}AddDebugEntry('SMTP Connect Exception : '+E.Message){$ENDIF}; End; finally smtp.Free; If TLSHandler <> nil then TLSHandler.Free; end; finally msg.Free; end; end;

Nevermind, I figured it out, I had to move the charset code after setting the email body.

Another bit of information, when looking at the headers of the delivered email, there's this: Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Even though CharSet is set to UTF8. According at this post https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9844250/not-able-to-send-utf-8-email-using-delphi-indy , I'm setting the parameters in the right order.

If I try to use UTF8Encode in Delphi 10.3 I get a warning "[dcc32 Warning] xxx.pas(683): W1057 Implicit string cast from 'RawByteString' to 'string'".

I am having a really weird issue with Firebird SQL 3.0.4, I have two servers, one local which I use for development and one production, both are running the exact same version of Firebird, using the same "firebird.conf" configuration file. On my production server, if I enter Hebrew text (e.g. "בדיקה"), I get "?????" in the DB. However, it works just fine on my development server. On my development server, if I enter German umlauts (e.g. "äöü"), I get "???" in the DB. However, it works just fine on my production server. Things I tried: 1. I verified the text sent to the DB is valid (appears correctly in UTF8 encoded log files). 2. I file-compared "firebird.conf" on both production and development server and they are identical. 3. I tried using this Firebird SQL command to reset the collation "alter character set utf8 set default collation unicode_ci_ai;". 4. Adding 'CharacterSet=utf8' to my connection params (full connection code below). 5. If I use DBeaver to view the database structure, I see all the "varchar" columns have a "charset" set to "NONE". dbMain := TFDConnection.Create(nil); with dbMain.Params do Begin Add('DriverID=FB'); Add('Server=localhost'); Add('Database=c:\DB\myDB.FDB'); Add('User_Name=SYSDBA'); Add('CharacterSet=utf8'); Add('Password=my_password'); end; dbMain.Open; Any ideas?

Just to conclude, after scouring the internet to find an elegant solution, I eventually had to brute-force it by creating new columns using this command : ALTER TABLE [TableName] ADD [NewColumnName] VARCHAR(100) CHARACTER SET UTF8; Then I used DBeaver's "Copy" & "Advanced Paste" to copy over the string data from the old columns to the new columns. I had to do this for approximately 10 tables with a combined total of around 60 columns. The whole process took about 1.5-2 hours.

I think I figured it out, when I created the DB using DBeaver, it simply created all columns with a CHARSET of "NONE". Now I'm trying to figure out a way to automate the conversion from NONE to UTF8 as there doesn't seem to be any straight-forward way of making it happen.