This Angular client application is a thin client app, used for testing.
- It is a small Angular app which is intended to be served by a Delphi FR desktop application.
- It will connect back to the Delphi app.
- From within the Angular app you can send race-timing data to the Delphi app.
- The Angular client app can also show a table with current data, coming back from the Delphi app.
- This is how you get good feedback during testing.
Fat client Angular apps that connect to the Delphi app are also available, see FR03A1 or FR03E1.
I have the original project on my Windows machine in directory D:\Angular\FR05J.
So on Windows you may want to git clone into a directory named FR05J, all caps, but this is just a suggestion. It will matter if you configure the path to the dist folder in the Delphi app, there are defaults.
You need to build with a base-href of /frac/ which is hardcoded in the Delphi app.
Use the build-fr definition in package.json like so:
npm run build-fr
You could build a bunch of slightly different client apps, all using frac as base-href, and then point the Delphi app at one of those. FR05J is one step in my attempt to build a light weight Angular timing app for FR.
Tested with FR69 from the sibling fleetrace-delphi repo. You need to tell the Delphi desktop app where the Angular app is located, so that it can be served on request from a browser.
- Use a Delphi application which was built with the AngularWeb feature.
- Start it up at least once to create a new configuration file.
- Find the configuration file, the ini-file.
- Close the Delphi application and edit the ini-file.
- Specify the path to the dist folder where you have created the Angular app.
- Or the path where you have put the Angular app.
- The next time you start the Delphi app it should be able to serve FR05J.
- Start up the Delphi app on Windows.
- Browse to the home page of the web server that is built into the Delphi app.
- There you will find an Angular link.
- On the page that is shown you will find a link to FRAC.
- This will call up /frac/index.html.
- You should see the Angular app loading.
Of course, you can just open Chrome and surf directly to something like
http://localhost:8086/Angular/Index
http://localhost:8086/frac/index.html
The Delphi app will tell you what the Url is. You could run the Delphi app in a virtual machine in the cloud. I have done that many years ago. But here I assume you will do so locally, for testing purposes.
FR05J will automatically call back to the Delphi app when it loads. It will try to retrieve the parameters of the currently loaded event - the event loaded into the server app. This should succeed since we know that the app will be served by the Delphi app - so the server is always up.
By design it does not work if you start the app up with ng serve -o.
Then you are NOT connected, but the app will start up, you can see it in the browser, and click on buttons.
I need to put this project on GitHub so that I do not loose code.
It is considered work in progress, though I am not currently working on it.
Use it for testing within your local area network. There is no authentication, no authorization.
I have done similar thin client applications for FR in the past using other technology. Usually you would be sending timing messages via tcp, from a desktop client program.
This Angular app can show you what has been possible in the past, what is still possible, how it is intended, and what should perhaps be working the same way in the future.
You may start here in order to build something modern which can be used with the devices.
Help morphing this into something that is fun to use on a phone.
Perhaps I will continue to maintain the Delphi server application, while the community might do client apps, fat and thin.
The server can be thin or fat too. FR69 is a super fat server app written in Delphi.
Asp.Net or Node/Express can be used instead of the Delphi app.
See the readme files for projects FR03A1 and FR03E1.