Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
JavaScript, C#, and ExtSharp
<>p>Colin Ramsay thinks that JavaScript and C# can be scarily similar as he shows an ExtJS example:- var win = new Ext.Window({
- title: 'Order Viewer', layout: 'border',
- width: 500, height: 500,
- modal: true, resizable: false, closable: false, draggable: false,
- items: [ frm, lst ]
- });
- win.on('render', function() {
- load(5);
- });
- win.show();
- var win = new Ext.Window{
- Title = "OrderViewer", Layout = Layout.Border,
- Width = 100, Height = 200,
- Modal = true, Resizable = false, Closable = false, Draggable = false,
- Items = new [] { frm, lst }
- };
- win.Render += delegate {
- load(5);
- };
- win.show();
This works well for ExtJS since it is written in a style that leads itself to this similarity. Colin also points out ExtSharp, a project that lets you write your Ext application in C#:
I really love Ext but coding in javascript just gives me the chills. So I went out and found a way to use my favorite js library (Ext) and my favorite programming language (C#) at the same time. By using a project called Script# I am able to write C# code and have it converted into javascript, similar to GWT. Building on that, Script# also allows you to code against external APIs, but you need to create the types, methods, properties, etc. for everything in the javascript library. So what I did was write a little console app that parses all of the ExtJS source files extracting out the script comments and writing C# files for each class. The end result is a programmable C# API to access all of the Ext objects and I threw in a couple new things to make life a little easier.
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I think that ExtJS took some heavy inspiration from the design of Windows Forms so this shouldn’t be a big surprise ;-).