DAF – Delphi Application Foundation (Community Edition)

Bringing modern development practices to Delphi — welcoming .NET developers to a familiar architecture

DAF (Delphi Application Framework) is a modular and extensible library for building structured, maintainable, and testable Delphi applications.
It aims to modernize Delphi development by promoting architectural patterns and coding standards inspired by the excellent .NET framework — such as dependency injection, structured logging, CQRS, in-process messaging, configuration binding, and clean abstractions.

DAF is also designed as a bridge for .NET developers entering the Delphi ecosystem, offering a familiar API style and clear, idiomatic structure.
It fosters openness, collaboration, and community-driven quality.

To deliver on this familiar and modern architecture, DAF models several foundational components of the .NET ecosystem — including hosting, configuration, and logging — following their design closely.
It also brings in community-proven patterns by porting influential projects such as NLog and MediatR, adapted natively to Delphi.

The Community Edition already includes:

• Dependency Injection — based on Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection
• Logging — based on Microsoft.Extensions.Logging, including:
  • Structured Logging — with support for log scopes and message templates
• Configuration System — based on Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration, with support for:
  • In-memory collections
  • .json files
  • .ini files
  • Binding to custom Delphi classes
• Host Model — ports of IHost and IHostBuilder for application composition and lifecycle management. Includes:
  • IHostEnvironment — for environment-based configuration
  • IHostApplicationLifetime — for application lifecycle events
  • IDafApplicationBuilder and IDafApplication — for streamlined access to host services
• CQRS and In-Process Messaging — modeled after MediatR, supporting commands, queries, and notifications
• NNLog — a Delphi-native port of NLog ("NNLog is Not NLog"), fully integrated with DAF's logging abstractions
• MiniSpec — BDD testing framework inspired by Cucumber and RSpec, including:
  • Gherkin Syntax — Given/When/Then directly in Delphi code
  • Scenario Outline — data-driven testing with Examples tables
  • Multiple Reporters — Console, JSON, JUnit (CI/CD), Live Dashboard
  • Test Doubles — elegant Stub, Mock, and Spy API

DAF Community Edition is distributed under the MIT License.

A Pro edition is available, offering documentation and commercial support.
Advanced features for DAF Pro are coming soon.

Editions

Edition	License	Description
DAF Community	MIT	Free for personal and commercial use
DAF Pro	Commercial	Documentation and professional support