Tag Archives: framework

Yet Another F# Web Framework

Update Jan 1, 2019

I spent some time splitting the projects and updating to ASP.NET Core 3.0 alpha (preview targets netcoreapp3.0 only). The Endpoint Routing feature is really, really nice. You can see the updated version here (diff).

Original Post

While evaluating the state of F# web frameworks over the holidays, I managed to create yet another lightweight framework prototype. You’re welcome. The prototype is based on ASP.NET Core Routing and some posts by Filip Wojcieszyn, specifically Building microservices with ASP.NET Core (without MVC) and Running ASP.NET Core content negotiation by hand. The prototype currently consists of a ContentNegotiation module and a Builder module containing a RouterBuilder and a ResourceBuilder, where the two builder types are computation expressions using CustomOperationAttributes.

let helloName =
    resource app.ApplicationServices "hello/{name}" {
        name "Hello Name"

        get (fun ctx ->
            let name = ctx.GetRouteValue("name") |> string
            ctx.Response.WriteAsync(sprintf "Hi, %s!" name))

        put (fun ctx ->
            let name = ctx.GetRouteValue("name") |> string
            ContentNegotiation.negotiate 201 name ctx)
    }
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To SPA, or not to SPA?

The hot topic in JavaScript right now typically involves which SPA framework one should use. These discussions tend to focus on one of the following:

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Framework Design

I’ve been spending some time lately reading and listening to talks on Framework Design and Language Design. In particular, I’ve found Krzysztof Cwalina’s blog and PDC talk very enlightening. I also rather enjoyed the PDC panel discussion on the Future of Programming Languages. I find this all very fascinating, but in a recent desire to apply pragmatism, I wondered how any of this could really help me in my day-to-day development tasks. Except to program to the framework’s design for efficiency and consistency, I had a hard time with that question.

However, with regard to my new hobby of extracting reusable patterns from apps I’m building, I really appreciate the idea of extracting these patterns into small, reusable and interoperable parts. In the Future of Programming panel, Jeremy Siek noted the importance of libraries working with other libraries (e.g., ASP.NET with ASP.NET MVC or ASP.NET AJAX with many Javascript libraries). Some libraries, however, implement their patterns too tightly around certain patterns to the exclusion of others. This can increase speed—Ruby on Rails comes to mind—but removes the ability to use other patterns or pluggable libraries–such as with Merb or Ramaze–to keep to the Ruby frameworks.

JB and I are attempting to extract patterns from our current project to enable faster development in future WPF/Silverlight projects. The current plan is to build our library around Composite WPF, an excellent library from Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices group for building rich client applications in WPF, and soon in Silverlight. We’re planning to build a business layer framework with service interfaces to the Composite WPF library and use the Repository pattern to allow for various data access methodologies.

That’s a loose description of our plan. What do you think? Do you see any flaws? For instance, we are currently not thinking about interchangeable UI libraries, even though a few, such as Silverlight.FX, have started to appear. Are we missing any existing business layer libraries? (I am not familiar with any myself, but I imagine someone has created one somewhere.) We are interested in your thoughts!