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ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

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Re: ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

#11

Post by contextfree »

henning wrote: post #2

If you get to write all your business logic in F# and there are no needless sources of headaches, I guess that could be pretty nice if you already use ASP.NET.

The main headache-inducer I've encountered is that to really get the benefits of F# I'd like my model objects to be immutable records, but the ASP.NET MVC model binding infrastructure (along with the binding/serialization/etc. parts of a lot of other .NET frameworks) assumes mutable model properties (and default constructors). You can create a custom model binder, which works but isn't 100% satisfactory for other reasons.

The example gets around this by just using LINQ to SQL generated C# classes as the model, but that's a big compromise.

Re: ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

#13

Post by MichaelGG »

luffy wrote: post #10

First off, I love F#. I use it extensively for offline data processing, managing our build process (via FAKE), and general purpose Windows scripting. I've also dabbled in DSL creation, and if you follow any of examples it really is pretty easy to do. As Don Syme (F#'s creator) has said, F# is a lot like a statically typed Python (with lots more syntax). But I wouldn't use it with ASP.NET. Learning F# is pretty heady…

Most of the time, we use F# on the backend, using C# as little as possible. For web apps, that usually means the ASPX files themselves. For the MVC controllers, writing them in F# seems to work great.

The largest contention point arises when we pass F#-ish types to the ASPX page for rendering. It works, it's just that the C# required at that point can be sort of ugly.

Also, don't forget WebSharper, which provides a way to write all your client-side code (JavaScript) in F#. It handles all sorts of things, including async RPC calls. http://www.intellifactory.com/products/wsp/Home.aspx

Re: ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

#14

Post by MichaelGG »

contextfree wrote: post #12

Has anyone used the WebSharper framework ( http://www.intellifactory.com/products/wsp/Home.aspx ) designed for F#? It looks like it addresses several issues I have with web development in general and F# web development in particular ...

We've started too, but not on any sizable projects yet. The guy that does our UI stuff loves it, and looking at the code, it looks pretty easy.

To keep apps interactive, you have to doing a lot on the client side. To keep sanity, you want to use a decent language. WebSharper seems to fix both of those.

Re: ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

#15

Post by batasrki »

Hmm, good article, but I think it does more to expose Microsoft's inability or unwillingness to integrate F# into the .Net platform the way C# is.

He had to create a C# web project, as Visual Studio doesn't support that for F#. He had to create a C# LINQ-to-SQL project to generate model classes as there's no support to do so in F#.

This saddens me greatly. Here is a potentially great language in the .Net ecosystem and the support for the most basic of things is missing.

Re: ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

#16

Post by luffy »

MichaelGG wrote: post #13
luffy wrote: post #10

First off, I love F#. I use it extensively for offline data processing, managing our build process (via FAKE), and general purpose Windows scripting. I've also dabbled in DSL creation, and if you follow any of examples it really is pretty easy to do. As Don Syme (F#'s creator) has said, F# is a lot like a statically typed Python (with lots more syntax). But I wouldn't use it with ASP.NET. Learning F# is pretty heady…

Most of the time, we use F# on the backend, using C# as little as possible. For web apps, that usually means the ASPX files themselves. For the MVC controllers, writing them in F# seems to work great. The largest contention point arises when we pass F#-ish types to the ASPX page for rendering. It works, it's just that the C# required at that point can be sort of ugly. Also, don't forget WebSharper, which provides a w…

The Intellifactory guys really know their F#. But this seems too much like WebForms and MSAjax for my tastes. After a while autogenerated javascript and HTML becomes very problematic, to say the least. If I want javascript, I'll just write it myself.

Now what I'd really like to see is an F# stand alone webserver - that would operate outside of ASP.NET/IIS. I envision a functional Request/Response pipeline, where you can augment the pipeline using function compositoin. Perhaps this could even handled by a computation expression or workflow. ( For those unfamiliar with F#, this is one of the killer features. See how simple it is to handle Async or parallel processing in F#).

Chris Smith has an interesting example of a Session State workflow in his F# book - I would like to see someone attempt that with a full fledged server.

Re: ASP.NET and F# - Creating MVC web applications in F#

#17

Post by DennisP »

arethuza wrote: post #7
DennisP wrote: post #4

Somewhere I read an article about how easy it is to create your own view engine for MVC. Given F#'s facility with DSLs, it seems it wouldn't be too infeasible to make an F# view engine too.

Personally, I much prefer simple view engines that have limited computational power - the port of StringTemplate to ASP.Net MVC being my current favorite http://code.google.com/p/string-template-view-engine-mvc/ :

Looks pretty cool, I might try that out!
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