Build a Simple VCL Application for Magento Data

Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData FireDAC Components for Magento, you gain access to live Magento data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve and update Magento data. This article will walk through connecting to Magento and creating a simple VCL application with the Form Designer.

Creating a VCL Application for Magento Data

The following instructions show how to use the Form Designer to create a simple VCL Forms application that shows the basic FireDAC objects needed to connect to Magento from any application.

The following example populates a TDBGrid control.

1. Create a new VCL Forms Application.
2. Drop a TFDPhysMagentoDriverLink and TFDConnection object onto the form.

3. Double-click the TFDConnection object. The FireDAC Connection Editor is displayed. Select "CData.Magento" in the DriverId menu and configure the connection properties.
   

   Magento uses the OAuth 1 authentication standard. To connect to the Magento REST API, you will need to obtain values for the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with your Magento system. See the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the OAuth values and connecting.

   You will also need to provide the URL to your Magento system. The URL depends on whether you are using the Magento REST API as a customer or administrator.

   • Customer: To use Magento as a customer, make sure you have created a customer account in the Magento homepage. To do so, click Account -> Register. You can then set the URL connection property to the endpoint of your Magento system.

   • Administrator: To access Magento as an administrator, set CustomAdminPath instead. This value can be obtained in the Advanced settings in the Admin menu, which can be accessed by selecting System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Base URL.

     If the Use Custom Admin Path setting on this page is set to YES, the value is inside the Custom Admin Path text box; otherwise, set the CustomAdminPath connection property to the default value, which is "admin".

   
4. Drop a TFDQuery object onto the form and set the properties below:
   • Connection - Set this property to the TFDConnection object, if this object is not already specified.
   • SQL - Click the button in the SQL property and enter a query.
   • Active - Set this property to true.
5. Drop a TDataSource object onto the form and set the following property:
   • DataSet - In the menu for this property, select the name of the TFDQuery object.
6. Drop a TDBGrid control onto the form and set the following property:
   • DataSource - Select the name of the TDataSource.

7. Drop a TFDGUIxWaitCursor onto the form. This is required to avoid a run-time error.

   

You now have an executable application that displays the results of the SQL Query set in the TFDQuery object.