How does Reactive Framework differ from F# Events?

Question

If I'm familiar with F# events already, and I don't plan to have too much C# interop, are there significant reasons to consider using the Reactive Framework?

Answer 1

I think there are two main differences:

• Firstly, there is a difference between the IEvent<'T> interface (and functions in the Event module) and the IObservable<'T> interface (used by functions from the Observable module and Reactive Fx). The difference has been discussed on SO earlier.

• Reactive Framework is a more complex library, so it implements many combinators that are not available in F# in Observable or Event modules (although there is a open-source project that adds many of them)

The summary is, you should prefer functions from the Observable module. If it has everything you need, there is no need for Reactive Framework. If it does not, then you'll need either Reactive Framework or MiniRx (which, I believe, is sometimes more efficient too).

The F# Event module dates back to 2006, so I think Reactive Framework is clearly inspired by that, but it does not fully replace the F# functionality (mainly because it is not standard part of .NET or F# core).