F#/JavaScript tool?

Question

At a UG meeting I heard about a tool called "web sharper" or "web sharpener" or something like that which is supposed to make it easy to generate JavaScript from F#. Functional JavaScript or something like that.

Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten the name wrong and I cannot find it. Does anyone know the name and have a link?

Answer 1

There are currently three projects that attempt to generate JavaScript from F#:

• Fable (updated 2019) is an open-source F# to JavaScript compiler with an active community and plenty of additional libraries. If you are looking for an answer nowadays, this is where you should start!

• WebSharper is a commercial product by IntelliFactory, but as far as I know it is the most advanced solution currently available.

• I'm the author of F# WebTools - the project is currently unmaintained (but I'm hoping to get it working again one day!). It has some interesting features that are not present in any other solutions (e.g. monads are used to check whether you correctly call server from client, also it has a sophisticated system for maintaining state in controls that run on both client and server-side).

• FSharp.JavaScript project is more recent and more lightweight and also open source - as far as I know it only translates F# to JavaScript (without additional features), but that may often be exactly what you want.