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F# for web development
f#web

This might be a dumb question, is it possible to use F# in ASP? I am new to F# and trying to understand.

Thanks.

.

F# cannot be used directly in ASP since ASP relies on Windows Scripting architecture and F# is a compiled language for .NET. You can write ASP.NET pages using F# and they works with IIS. If you want to use F# from an ASP page (or even PHP on Windows) you can expose an F# assembly as a COM component, in this case you can instantiate F# objects from ASP pages written in VB or JScript.

Cheers

Antonio

By on 11/30/2007 4:56 AM ()

As Antonio says development of ASP.NET web pages is possible in F#. It's not quite as straight forward as in C#/VB.NET because you don't have the excellent tool support that Visual Studio offers, so it requires you to know a little bit more about the guts of ASP.NET that you might otherwise of had to.

There are a couple of ASP.NET/F# tutorials:
[link:www.strangelights.com]
[link:www.codeplex.com]

If you were refering to "classic ASP", then, again as Antonio, says this is possible but I'd advise against it and encourage you to port your application to ASP.NET, which is better that ASP in some many ways.

Cheers,
Rob

By on 11/30/2007 6:01 AM ()

Hi,

You are Robert Pickering. I didn't know, I got your F# foundations book yesterday. I haven't started reading yet. That is my weekend plan. Can't wait to read it. I should have asked a autographed book from you instead of buying from the store :)

Thanks again for writing book for people like me

Nair

By on 11/30/2007 12:43 PM ()

Thank you both the answers. One another question, will F# be a good candidate for web application development compared to traditional programming languages like VB.Net or C#? Pros and Cons?

Thanks again for help.

By on 11/30/2007 12:39 PM ()

I think that it really depends on the kind of Web developement you have in mind. I think F# is great for Web development as any other programming area. As Rob pointed out, however, the WYSYG support is better for C# and VB at the moment (though the Somasegar announcement let us hope in a better support for F# too). The code dom provider for F# is also not completey mature yet. Nevertheless I developed great Web site already with F# and I recommend you to use it if you need to develop complex business logic on the server side. In this case you may get more coincise and effective code than you would with C# and VB. If you need simple point and click and fetch db logic it is up to you, but probably C# would be a better choice at the moment.

Antonio

By on 11/30/2007 1:53 PM ()

Thank you very much for the great input and I didn't find Expert C# before. I need to check it out today. I am so happy to be in the company of great minds (both of you).

I been developing apps in C#/ASP.Net for a while and I am trying to see if I can develop using F# to see if it gets some thing for the developers and to maintain.

Thanks again and keep it coming ....

By on 12/2/2007 10:39 AM ()

Yes, I am Robert Pickering, I'll happly sign your book, if you are passing by Paris it would be a whole lot easier ;). (Though if you really want it signed mail me at robert@strangelights.com and we'll work something out).

As Antonio suggest alot depends on what your trying to achieve. I think if you C# for the GUI stuff you will have an easier time, especially if your new to ASP.NET as well - the VS integration really helps a lot here. A good compromise might be write the GUI in C# and put everything else in an F# dll and make calls to the dll from the C# code.

BTW Antonio is Antonio Cisternino, co author of Expert F#: [link:www.amazon.com]

Cheers,
Rob

By on 11/30/2007 11:06 PM ()

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