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Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

JavaScript, C#, and ExtSharp

Category: .NET, Ext

Colin Ramsay thinks that JavaScript and C# can be scarily similar as he shows an ExtJS example:

PLAIN TEXT
JAVASCRIPT:
  1.  
  2. var win = new Ext.Window({
  3.     title: 'Order Viewer', layout: 'border',
  4.     width: 500, height: 500,
  5.     modal: true, resizable: false, closable: false, draggable: false,
  6.     items: [ frm, lst ]
  7. });
  8.  
  9. win.on('render', function() {
  10.     load(5);
  11. });
  12.  
  13. win.show();
  14.  
PLAIN TEXT
C#:
  1.  
  2. var win = new Ext.Window{
  3.     Title = "OrderViewer", Layout = Layout.Border,
  4.     Width = 100, Height = 200,
  5.     Modal = true, Resizable = false, Closable = false, Draggable = false,
  6.     Items = new [] { frm, lst }
  7. };
  8.  
  9. win.Render += delegate {
  10.     load(5);
  11. };
  12.  
  13. win.show();
  14.  

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.

Posted by Dion Almaer at 6:06 am

++++-
4.5 rating from 53 votes

3 Comments »

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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 ;-).

Comment by posure — April 3, 2008

Thanks. Good article.

Comment by ermenisoykirmi — May 30, 2008

Interesting Article, thanks Armenian Genocide , great information and research.

Comment by ArmenianGenocide — June 8, 2008

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