ProDelphi: The Ultimate Guide for Developers—
Introduction
ProDelphi is a modern development framework and toolset designed to accelerate application development with a focus on developer productivity, robust architecture, and cross-platform compatibility. This guide walks you through ProDelphi’s philosophy, core features, project setup, common patterns, performance tuning, testing, deployment, and real-world best practices to help you become an effective ProDelphi developer.
Why ProDelphi?
ProDelphi aims to blend the clarity of strongly-typed languages with modern tooling and ecosystem conveniences. Its core goals are:
- Productivity: concise syntax, smart scaffolding, and batteries-included tooling.
- Maintainability: clear module boundaries, dependency injection, and convention-over-configuration.
- Performance: optimized compilation and runtime behavior for responsive apps.
- Cross-platform: run on desktop, server, and mobile targets with a single codebase.
Core Concepts
Modular Architecture
ProDelphi encourages breaking applications into modules (features, services, UI components) with well-defined interfaces. Modules should be small, testable, and independently deployable when possible.
Strong Typing & Interfaces
A rich type system and explicit interfaces reduce runtime errors and make refactoring safer. Types are used for contracts across modules and for compiling-time guarantees.
Dependency Injection (DI)
Built-in DI container manages object lifetimes and dependencies, making classes easier to test and swap implementations without changing consumer code.
Reactive Data Flow
ProDelphi provides reactive primitives for state management and event propagation. These make UI updates predictable and simplify asynchronous workflows.
CLI Tooling & Scaffolding
A command-line interface generates project templates, components, tests, and deployment artifacts. The CLI also integrates linters, formatters, and static analysis.
Getting Started
Prerequisites
- Latest ProDelphi SDK (install via the official installer or package manager)
- Node-like package manager or ProDelphi package manager (pdpm)
- Git for source control
- IDE plugin (optional) for syntax highlighting and debugging
Creating a New Project
From terminal:
pd create my-app --template=web cd my-app pd install pd dev This scaffolds a ready-to-run web application with example modules, tests, and CI configuration.
Project Layout (typical)
- src/
- modules/
- auth/
- dashboard/
- shared/
- utils/
- types/
- ui/
- main.pd
- modules/
- tests/
- pd.config
- package.lock
- README.md
Language & Syntax Highlights
ProDelphi’s syntax emphasizes clarity. Example: defining an interface and implementation
interface IUserService { getUser(id: String): Promise<User> } class UserService implements IUserService { constructor(repo: IUserRepo) { ... } async getUser(id: String): Promise<User> { return await this.repo.findById(id) } } Type annotations, async/await, and clear interface separation are fundamental.
State Management & Reactive Patterns
ProDelphi’s reactive primitives (signals, stores, and effects) offer a predictable model:
- Signals: fine-grained observable values
- Stores: aggregated application state
- Effects: side-effect handlers for async workflows
Example: simple counter store
store Counter { state: { count: Number } = { count: 0 } actions: { increment() { this.state.count += 1 } decrement() { this.state.count -= 1 } } } Bindings connect stores to UI components so changes propagate automatically.
Routing & Navigation
Routing supports nested routes, lazy-loaded modules, and guards for authentication. Define routes declaratively and attach route-level resolvers to fetch data before navigation.
Data Access & Persistence
ProDelphi supports multiple persistence options: in-memory stores, SQL, NoSQL, and REST/GraphQL clients. Use repository patterns to abstract data sources:
interface IProductRepo { list(filter: Filter): Promise<Product[]> get(id: String): Promise<Product|null> } Repositories can be swapped (e.g., mock repo for tests, SQL repo for production).
Testing Strategy
ProDelphi encourages a layered testing approach:
- Unit tests for logic with DI and mocking
- Integration tests for module interactions
- End-to-end tests for real user flows (using pd-test or Playwright)
Example unit test (pseudo):
describe("UserService", () => { it("returns a user", async () => { const repo = mock(IUserRepo).withReturn({ id: "1", name: "A" }) const svc = new UserService(repo) const u = await svc.getUser("1") assert.equal(u.name, "A") }) }) Performance Tuning
Key areas to optimize:
- Lazy-load heavy modules and assets
- Use memoization for expensive pure functions
- Prefer streams for large datasets instead of loading all in memory
- Profile with built-in pd-profiler to find hotspots
Security Best Practices
- Validate and sanitize all inputs
- Use parameterized queries for database access
- Configure strong CORS and CSP headers for web apps
- Store secrets with secure vault integrations (avoid committing them)
CI/CD & Deployment
ProDelphi projects include pd-ci templates. Typical pipeline stages:
- lint, typecheck, and test
- build artifacts (optimized bundles)
- deploy to staging
- smoke test
- deploy to production
Deploy targets include container registries, serverless platforms, and desktop package stores.
Debugging & Tooling
- pd-inspect: runtime inspection tool for state and DI graph
- IDE plugin: breakpoints, watch expressions, and quick fixes
- Log levels: debug/info/warn/error and structured logging for observability
Migrating Legacy Apps
Migration approach:
- Extract a small module and reimplement in ProDelphi.
- Create bridges/adapters to the legacy system.
- Incrementally replace components and run integration tests.
- Monitor performance and rollback paths.
Example: Building a Todo App (High Level)
- Scaffold project: pd create todo –template=web
- Define models: Todo { id, text, done }
- Create store with CRUD actions
- Build UI components bound to store
- Add persistence via repository (localStorage or server)
- Add tests and CI pipeline
- Deploy
Common Pitfalls & Tips
- Overusing global state — prefer scoped stores
- Not writing interfaces — makes refactoring risky
- Ignoring performance profiling — premature optimization isn’t helpful, but profiling reveals real issues
- Forgetting to mock dependencies in unit tests — leads to brittle tests
Community & Resources
Join ProDelphi community channels for plugins, templates, and troubleshooting. Use official docs and CLI help for up-to-date commands.
Conclusion
ProDelphi balances productivity, maintainability, and performance with a clear architecture and modern tooling. By learning its core patterns—modular design, DI, reactive state, and testing—you’ll build robust applications that scale. Start small, iterate, and embrace the framework’s conventions to get the most benefit.
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