field-report-delphi

Sample application demonstrating AWS SDK including S3, SNS, and SQS.

Overview

The Field Report sample demonstrates a workflow capturing data in a "Field Report" app which is uploaded to an "inbound reports" bucket on Amazon S3. The uploaded reports trigger a notification to an Amazon SNS topic which will notify any subscribers. An Amazon SQS queue for "new reports" is subscribed to the SNS topic. A "Review" application (or multiple of) can receive messages from the SQS queue to "Review" and choose an action to take, either "Archive" or "Discard". Choosing to "Archive" a report queues a message on another queue for "archive reports". The "Archive" service is a command line service that listens to the "archive reports" queue copying the report to an "archive bucket" for each message received.

Features/Progress

• CloudFormation script to deploy resources on AWS.
  • IAM Users and credentials for front-end applications.
• Field Report app.
  • Take photo.
  • Attach notes.
  • Upload to S3.
• Review app.
  • Poll "new reports" queue.
  • Fetch photo from S3.
  • Display photo.
  • Provide countdown timer for message expiration.
  • Archive action.
  • Discard action.
• Archive service.
  • Poll "archive reports" queue.
  • Copy objects to archive bucket on request.

Requirements

• AWS Account
• Embarcadero RAD Studio / Delphi
• Appercept AWS SDK for Delphi

Setup

In order to run the sample apps, resources need to be deployed on AWS.

1. Sign in to the AWS Console.
2. Navigate to the AWS CloudFormation Console.
3. Create a stack based on the CloudFormation/FieldReport.yml template. Specify a "Stack name" and accept all defaults.

Compiling and running the apps

Once you have followed the setup to deploy the AWS resources, you can compile and run the demo applications.

1. Open the AWS SDK.groupproj.
2. In each project within the group, there is a Settings.pas. The constants defined in the Settings.pas files marry up to the outputs published from the CloudFormation stack. Copy and paste the values from the CloudFormation console.
3. Build and run each project. The applications work independently so the order running them doesn't matter but each project needs to be running to see the demo as a whole.

You can experiment running multiple instances (even across different platforms) of each program to see how the solution will scale with ease thanks to Amazon's cloud architecture.

Costs

The resources used in this demo have costs but are minimal. Some services have a "free tier" so this demonstration would not incur fees for some of the resources used. For detailed explanation of potential costs refer to Amazon's pricing guides for the relevant services:

• https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
• https://aws.amazon.com/sns/pricing/
• https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/pricing/

Cleaning up

After running the demo you will want to clean up the resources created to save any potential ongoing costs. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Amazon S3 console.
2. Empty the buckets created as a part of the CloudFormation stack. If you're unsure of the buckets created, refer to the "Resources" tab on the CloudFormation stack details.
3. Delete the CloudFormation stack.