Author: Alain B27005
If you are looking to use some third-party libraries, APIs, or frameworks in your mobile applications on iOS or Android, you may need to generate header files in order to access those interfaces. You might want to do this if you want to use the Facebook SDK, the Google AdWords Conversion Tracking SDK, or any number of third-party libraries. There are a number of tools that can help you do this (some of which shift with Delphi 10.1 Berlin).
The first tool is SdkTransform and it is used to generate header files for IOS and OSX frameworks. The second tool is Java2OP and it is used to generate header files for Java libraries over on Android. Both of these tools come for free with Delphi 10.1 Berlin, but there are also a couple different third-party tools for generating header files from the Java libraries as well. The first one is Java2Pas and the second is JavaImport for Android. If one of the Java header generator tools doesn’t work for your particular library try the other two. Lastly, you can use the JavaBridge to interface with Java on Windows.
Table of Contents
SDKTransform for iOS and OSX Frameworks (download SDK Transform Assistant)
The SdkTransform tool generates Object Pascal header files for IOS and OSX frameworks (including third party frameworks). The tool is command line based and ships with Delphi. HOSOKAWA Jun, a Delphi developer out of Japan, has created a Windows GUI front end in FireMonkey for SdkTransform which makes it as simple as selecting where you want to output the Objective-C Bridge files and then clicking one button to generate them all. The source code for the SDK Transform Assistant app is available on Github. I downloaded the source and compiled it under Delphi 10.1 Berlin. The Assistant app should automatically detect the location of CLang. Once the paths are setup correctly and you set an output path then just click start and it will generate all of the Object Pascal files. One thing to note is that you have to add the IOS and OSX frameworks that you want generated to the Delphi SDK Manager prior to generating the bridge files. Otherwise you will just get the default frameworks.
If you don’t want to take the time to generate the headers for the default Apple frameworks yourself you can access all of the ones I already generated with the SDKTransform Assistant app over on Github. Keep in mind there may be newer versions of the Apple frameworks now so you may want to re-generate them yourself just in case or if you run into any problems.
If you want to generate Object Pascal header files for an iOS framework that has not been provided by Apple you need to get the framework folder and place it in the same directory where Delphi downloads the Apple frameworks (example: C:UsersAnonymousDocumentsEmbarcaderoStudioSDKsiPhoneOS9.3.sdkSystemLibrary ). Once you do this the SDK Transform Assistant will pick up that third party framework and generate the header files for it as well. I did this with the Facebook SDK for iOS and you can download those header files that I generated from Github.
HOSOKAWA Jun has a more extensive blog post (in Japanese) about SDKTransform, the CLang directory structure, and SDK Transform Assistant in a blog post. You can use the translate function in Chrome if needed. If you dig into the SDKTransform Assistant source code you can also see the various command line variables and directories which the SDKTransform tool accepts. Here is a sample of the source code:
There is also an SDKTransformTypes.txt file in the Delphi 10.1 Berlin bin directory which shows how SDKTransform will map the types from Objective-C to Object Pascal. Here is the complete types map list:
| char=Byte char*=MarshaledAString short=SmallInt short*=PSmallInt int=Integer int*=PInteger long=LongInt long*=PLongInt float=Single float*=PSingle double=Double double*=PDouble long long=Int64 long long*=PInt64 unsigned.OSX=Cardinal unsigned*.OSX=PCardinal unsigned.IOS=LongWord unsigned*.OSX=PLongWord unsigned char=Byte unsigned char*=PByte unsigned char**=PByte unsigned short=Word unsigned int=Cardinal unsigned int*=PCardinal unsigned long=LongWord unsigned long*=PLongWord unsigned long long=UInt64 unsigned long long*=PUInt64 size_t=LongWord size_t*=PLongWord BOOL=Boolean BOOL*=PBoolean bool=Boolean uint8_t=Byte uint8_t*=PByte uint8_t**=PByte uint16_t=Word uint16_t*=PWord uint32_t=LongWord uint32_t*=PLongWord uint64_t=UInt64 __uint32_t.OSX=Cardinal __uint32_t.IOS=LongWord int8_t=Int8 int16_t=Int16 int32_t=Int32 int32_t*=PInt32 int64_t=Int64 UInt8=Byte |
UInt16=UInt16 UInt32=UInt32 UInt64=UInt64 SInt8=Int8 SInt16=Int16 SInt32=Int32 SInt64=Int64 Float32=Single Float64=Double id=Pointer id*=Pointer void=Pointer void*=Pointer CGFloat*=PCGFloat ptrdiff_t=Integer Class=Pointer Protocol=Pointer Protocol*=Pointer AppleEvent*=Pointer GLint*=PGLint NSGlyph*=PNSGlyph NSGlyphInscription*=PNSGlyphInscription NSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute*=PNSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute NSPropertyListFormat*=PNSPropertyListFormat NSRange*=PNSRange NSRangePointer=PNSRange NSStringEncoding*=PNSStringEncoding NSTIFFCompression*=PNSTIFFCompression NSTIFFCompression**=PNSTIFFCompression NSZone*=Pointer _Bool=Integer |
Java2OP for Android Libraries (download Java2OP)
Java2OP.exe (“Java To Object Pascal”) is a command-line tool that you can use to generate Delphi native bridge files from Java libraries (JAR or class files). You can download it here. It will take a JAR or .java files and create Object Pascal interface files for them. You can use the generated files to provide your Delphi applications access to those Java libraries on Android. Java2OP requires Java and the JDK 1.7+ for it to run and the JDK must be in your path. As you may know Delphi provides the option to add third party JAR files automatically into a project and Java2OP creates the interface files you need. If you want to use third party SDKs or use some Android API functionality that is not provided in the FireMonkey RTL this is the utility to use to make it easier to access.
To use Java2OP, simply call the tool with any combination of options that you like:
Java2OP.exe [options]
You must specify at least one input option that indicates what content you want to include in the output Delphi native bridge file.
Your output native bridge file does not include members that are part of the built-in RAD Studio Java libraries for Android unless you explicitly specify those members using the -classes parameter. If any of the classes that you specified depends on members from the built-in RAD Studio Java libraries for Android, the resulting native bridge file does not re-declare those members; instead, it includes the RAD Studio units that already declare those members.
Input Options
-classes Space-separated list of names of classes or packages to export.
-classes lets you define a specific subset of the specified Java sources (-jar or -src options) or the Android API.
-jar Space-separated list of input Java compiled libraries (.jar files). All API members of the specified files are parsed and declared on the resulting native bridge file.
-src Space-separated list of input folders containing Java source files (.java files). All API members of the files in the specified folders are parsed and declared on the resulting native bridge file.
Output Options
Option Description
-unit File name of the output unit.
Default: Android.JNI.Interfaces
Examples
Exporting some classes and packages from the Android API:
Java2OP.exe -classes android.net.ConnectivityManager android.location.*
Exporting all classes from mylib.jar:
Java2OP.exe -jar mylib.jar
Exporting a single class from mylib.jar:
Java2OP.exe -jar mylib.jar -classes com.mypackage.ClassName
Exporting all the classes from a folder of Java sources specifying the file name of the output Delphi unit:
Java2OP.exe -src myproject/src -unit Android.JNI.UnitName
Java2Pas and JavaImport for Android Libraries
The other two tools I mentioned are Java2Pas and JavaImport for Android but they are both commercial apps. I have only used Java2Pas and it performs pretty well. I used the Java2Pas utility to create interface files for the entire Android SDK. You can download the Object Pascal wrappers for the Android 10 through Android 23 over on Github.
There is everything from android.security.KeyChain to android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech to android.nfc.NfcAdapter to android.opengl.GLES30 to android.os.Vibrator to android.provider.ContactsContract and literally thousands of more interfaces.
In addition to the Android API I also processed the Google AdWords Conversion Tracking SDK with Java2Pas which you can download from Github. One interesting feature about Java2Pas is that it comes with functionality to remove circular references from the generated files.
JavaImport for Android is a third party solution from Winsoft which I haven’t used but Winsoft provides a trial version so be sure to check this one out as well as it may suite your needs.
C++Builder With iOS, OSX, and Android Libraries
I haven’t talked about C++Builder yet in this blog post but you can easily use any of these Object Pascal header files in your C++Builder projects and call Java code for example in C++Builder. There are a couple ways to do this but one way is to just add the .pas file to your C++Builder project and C++Builder will automatically generate C++ headers for that file (they will be contained within a .hpp file). Just follow the above instructions talked about in this blog post for SDKTransform and Java2OP and then utilize the generated .pas files in your C++Builder projects. Check out the following video for more information about using the .pas files and the second method to do this:
