Meta-Delphi question about web hosting..

[jglosz 0]

Hi..  I'd like to create a niche-ecommerce platform, like ebay but between very specific customers for the web, for starters. It would need access to a large DB (so, using AWS or Azure) and I'd love to create a Delphi FMX app to be hosted on a standard Windows (or Linux?) host which would present dynamic pages to the user (based on their search terms).. and then they can choose and then order/buy something..    My questions:

 

1.  Is using Delphi overkill in your opinion? I'm very comfortable with Delphi, but is the hassle of getting an application hosted on a web host too difficult? Looks to me like some hosts (like GoDaddy) don't allow such things.  So would just something web-native like Javascript be a better choice? 

 

2. If a web-hosted Delphi application is workable, would you have a particular host recommendation? Is there one you like? 

 

3. And of course, a phone app (both Android and iOS) ..  I created a simple iOS app once, about 10 years ago, and even got it in the Apple store, but man were there a LOT of hoops to jump through.  I haven't revisited the iOS side of Delphi since, but I hope it's gotten easier, lol! 

 

Thank you for any advice you may have!  [heart emoji here] 

 

Joseph

[Angus Robertson 577]

You need a data centre hosted server, either a physical machine you rent or own, or a virtual private server running on data centre hardware, you then have complete control over what applications are installed, not sure why you want FMX unless for Linux. 

 

I have a hosted Dell rack server in one data centre, and a secondary VPS in another, running all my Delphi servers.  But many companies just order virtual servers from Azure, AWS and others, which have the benefit of scaling, but can be horribly expensive.  

 

Azure seems easy to buy, I've been getting spam emails from 50 or more Azure VPSs in India, USA, Netherlands and the UK, Microsoft seems to sell VPS to anyone. 

 

Angus

 

[PhilPlus 6]

A FMX (or VCL) application is not a Web application. The best way, if you need to have a full Delphi Web dev project, is to use a framework like TMS Web Core : https://www.tmssoftware.com/site/tmswebcore.asp or UniGui : https://www.unigui.com/ both creating web applications in Delphi.

[Die Holländer 49]

5 hours ago, PhilPlus said:

if you need to have a full Delphi Web dev project, is to use a framework like...

or https://thinfinity-vui-v3-docs.cybelesoft.com/

It seems it delivers the whole environment needed..

Delphi Demo

Edited November 5 by Die Holländer

[David Schwartz 428]

I second the recommendation for TMS WEB Core. It's just like building a VCL or FMX app, but it runs in the web browser. The language has been enhanced a bit to deal with async issues, but it's easy to learn. (Once you do, you wonder why it's not in Delphi's core.)

[Patrick PREMARTIN 80]

On 11/5/2024 at 3:35 PM, Die Holländer said:

or https://thinfinity-vui-v3-docs.cybelesoft.com/

It seems it delivers the whole environment needed..

Delphi Demo

For an internal app in a company or paid users Thinfinity can be a good simple solution.
For a public website it's too expensive. Use Delphi as a server on Windows or Linux if you want and dynamic website solutions (from Delphi or others).

 

For an e-commerce site it could be easier to use an existing solution like LiteCart (simple, easy to use) or Prestashop (more complex but full of features for any commerce) and synchronize its database to your real DB.

[jglosz 0]

On 11/5/2024 at 6:35 AM, Die Holländer said:

or https://thinfinity-vui-v3-docs.cybelesoft.com/

It seems it delivers the whole environment needed..

Delphi Demo

Thank you for the details...  it would be a public website, but it has to be dynamic content, meaning people or companies will upload something, and then that something will be available to others.  Every shopping cart I've ever seen just has static sites.

[Patrick PREMARTIN 80]

9 hours ago, jglosz said:

Thank you for the details...  it would be a public website, but it has to be dynamic content, meaning people or companies will upload something, and then that something will be available to others.  Every shopping cart I've ever seen just has static sites.

Perhaps you can tell us more about your project ? Depending on what you want to do we could help to find the better solution.

[David Schwartz 428]

On 11/22/2024 at 4:44 PM, jglosz said:

Thank you for the details...  it would be a public website, but it has to be dynamic content, meaning people or companies will upload something, and then that something will be available to others.  Every shopping cart I've ever seen just has static sites.

If you've ever seen a FOREX dashboard built in Delphi running on a high-speed link, you wouldn't be asking these questions about whether it's possible. Yes, it absolutely is.

 

What problem are you REALLY trying to solve?

 

Also, shopping carts are DESIGNED to be STATIC, so they're an inappropriate example.

 

Stock, bond, and FOREX trading are examples of HIGHLY dynamic apps, and Delphi has been used to build all of them.

[Vincent Parrett 762]

My preferred stack for web dev is asp dotnet for the back end and React for the front end.

 

If you must use delphi - https://github.com/danieleteti/delphimvcframework would be a good option for the back end. I hadn't looked at it in a long while, but it's come a long way in the last few years.

 

asp dotnet and delphi mvc have a ton of functionality which scale really well. I steer clear of asp dotnet for the UI part because it changes too often and updating applications becomes a major task (ask anyone who updated from asp.net 4.x to asp dotnet core). 

On the front end, you could use what ever web ui framework you want, React, Vue and Svelte are all good options - but they all come with a learning curve. 

[jglosz 0]

On 11/27/2024 at 4:26 PM, David Schwartz said:

If you've ever seen a FOREX dashboard built in Delphi running on a high-speed link, you wouldn't be asking these questions about whether it's possible. Yes, it absolutely is.

 

What problem are you REALLY trying to solve?

 

Also, shopping carts are DESIGNED to be STATIC, so they're an inappropriate example.

 

Stock, bond, and FOREX trading are examples of HIGHLY dynamic apps, and Delphi has been used to build all of them.

Yes, a trading platform that's accessed via a regular web URL is kind of what I need.  I'd like to do something like eBay, except with very specific business logic for this particular area, so I'd really prefer to develop it in Delphi since I am pretty good with that.  And then that Delphi "app" would be hosted on a web host like GoDaddy or such.  GoDaddy seems very clunky though, as it seems to want to force you into specific paradigms. I need a "naked" web host to which I can FTP or otherwise upload complete HTML pages (or an app like the Delphi app I am considering building which would push dynamic pages to the client) ..

I once created, from scratch, a complex shopping cart entirely in Javascript, and I supposed that or Python or such is the standard way to go here.  However, I want to do this myself, and I don't know Python, and Javascript is painful (to me) and I love Delphi - its just phenomenally powerful - so I wouldn't mind shoehorning this into a Delphi application that serves up dynamic web pages on the internet to users, based on their input search criteria.  There would also have to be a database.. could be local on the web server, initially as least. Then, ported to AWS or Azure, possibly.

So, I would also like any recommendations for a web host as well. Long ago, I used a really good one called "Infinity" I believe, but they went out of business. 

Anyway, that's about it...  I sincerely thank you and welcome any input you and anyone may have.  🙂

 

[David Schwartz 428]

Well, writing web apps in Delphi is not something I'd want to do. They have to be built as something like ISAPI modules (basically, DLLs) running in a Windows host. Not my idea of fun.

 

You really should look into TMS WEB Core. It's sort of an "add-in" to the Delphi IDE that lets you use a slightly enhanced version of Delphi (without inline var support yet) that gets compied down to javascript. You can hit the F9 key and your app will open up inside of a web browser. It's really awesome to see in action.

 

They also have a version that runs in Visual Studio Code.

 

Visit their website to learn more. I think it's quite revolutionary.

 

As far as hosting goes, hosting is hosting is hosting. All that stuff you might see as "clunky" is just the crap a vendor ads into the environment that you have to pass by while getting to your destination -- like how the grocery stores always put staples at the back of the store and all of the newer and more profitable stuff towards the front so you have to walk by it on the way to get your milk and meat.

 

If you want to get some experience with hosting, grab something like LAMP or MAMP or WAMP (Linux/Mac/Windows) and install it in your computer. It loads up everything you'll need to do web development on your local machine. Win 10 includes a Linux subsystem that has these things included as well.

 

A lot of people use FTP to upload stuff to their server; I just prefer to stick with cPanel hosting and use it's FileManager to upload files to the file system. It doesn't let you copy a file tree, but that's easy to solve by making a zip file of your file tree, uploading it into the folder where you want it, then unzipping / expanding it there. It's way easier than messing with FTP IMHO.

 

If you're working with a Windows server, you'll need to use RDP to get into it. Linux can use SSH which just gives you a shell, although that's only avilable if you have a dedicated server with root access; otherwise, just use whatever your control panel offers (like cPanel's FileManager). 

 

When you visit different hosting providers, if you look at enough of them, you'll find they're all selling the same few distributons of Linux, or some Windows version. If you're using Delphi to build a REST service, you'll probably need to use a Windows host -- unless you can generate a Linux target.