It’s rather a common scenario when a Firemonkey mobile app needs to open a file. It might be a PDF document, an image or video. And while opening a file directly inside of Firemonkey app is totally a legit strategy, sometimes it may be not so easy to implement. TImage provides great support for various graphics formats, but what about PDF? Implementing PDF support for multiple platforms may be quite a challenge. Luckily, both iOS and Android provides a shortcut, we can ask OS to open a document in a third-party application of user’s choice.

And beyond that, mobile OS usually provides more options than just “open a file”. We can also share or print a file, which may be useful for users. (more…)

It’s a common task for a Firemonkey developer to check Internet connectivity. It might be useful to notify a user that he is going to download a huge amount of data using his mobile connection, or just indicate Online/Offline mode on the UI.

This functionality is missing from RAD Studio classes, so lots of developers out there have made solutions for their needs, although most of them only solve problems of their developer and may not fulfill your needs.

In order to fill that gap I made a solution which follows these guidelines:

• Android and iOS support
• ability to retrieve current Internet connectivity state – disconnected, connected to WiFi, connected to mobile data
• Internet connectivity state listener which fires every time when connectivity changes
• a cross-platform interface with encapsulated platform-specific solutions

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Embarcadero have just released a HotFix for RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin specifically related to debugging apps on macOS Sierra and iOS 10.

Specifically, it provides fixes for:

• Debugging macOS applications that run on macOS 10.12 with Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin
• Running and debugging iOS 10 applications that run on the iOS 10 simulator with Delphi and RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin
• Debugging iOS 32-bit applications that run on iOS 10 device with Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin (Berlin Debugger Hotfix)

If you’re doing iOS and or macOS dev, you definitely want to check this out.

Registered Berlin users can download it here

Last week we were doing some updates for a customer on a C++Builder Android and iOS app. The Mac that we were using to do the code signing for iOS hadn’t been used for this before, so we needed to setup the Certificates and Provisioning Profiles for the customer’s account.

I always dread this part, as I’ve found it always takes longer and is more complicated than you expect. I’ve done it enough times now though that I thought I’d struck all the issues, however this time I found a new one that I thought I should document for anyone else (or my future self) who strikes it.

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