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Web Hosting for FSharp - Woot! (but I don't know whether to laugh or cry)
f#web

I'm building a small web app, which must be deployed to a third party host.

I really wanted to do it in ASP.NET/F#, but quickly discoverd that they don't support F# (no surprise), and a bit of googling found that no hosts support F# - again no surprise.

So I've written it ASP.NET/C# instead. C# was OK (especially in Visual Studio), but I missed F#. I even prototyped some features in F# (the RSS reader), and rewrote them in C#.

Now, after I've been on it for 2 months, and nearly finished, a moment of illumination has hit me - I don't have to deploy the F# code - I can deploy the DLL's!!! (ie. leave .aspx and aspx.cs files in the root, and deploy F# dll's to Bin)

Bingo! It works!

I don't know whether to laugh or cry - laugh, that I found such a simple solution, or cry, because it took two months!

Anway, I've just discovered the *other* big advantage of working with .Net. The first and obvious advantage is using the .Net libraries, the other advantage is deploying to a language agnostic platform. In 2009, the second advantage is probably the bigger one. (Try deploying OCaml to a host that doesn't have native support!)

Apologies to the .Net gurus who are saying "Well, duh" :)

.

It all works in Visual Studio. Just create an ASP.NET/C# web site, then add an F# project, and in the F# project settings direct the compiler output to the Bin of the web site.

By on 5/30/2009 12:03 AM ()

will i need to fiddle with asp.net code to get it all working. or everything is taken care by F#

By on 1/3/2014 9:51 AM ()

I am delighted to get a reply to this four years after I posted! I can still remember posting it. :)

I don't have Visual Studio in front of me as I'm on holiday, but what I posted is still correct. I have since deployed a much larger asp.net mvc project to Azure with a mix of C# and F#.

Just set the asp.net/c# project as the main project in the solution (I can't recall exactly what the setting is, but it's a right-click from the project in the solution explorer) and then in the Properties for the F# project direct the compiler output to the bin of the C# project.

You can't reference the f# project directly from asp.net/c#. You need to reference the DLL's (in the bin folder) from the C# and import them with web.config of the ASP.NET.

Thanks again, and good luck with it! I personally found it very worthwhile to be doing much of the solution in F#.

By on 1/3/2014 5:34 PM ()

>> You can't reference the f# project directly from asp.net/c#.

In VS2013 you can reference an F# project from a C# project in the same solution. Use the normal sequence from the C# project, ie. right-click References -> Add Reference, and then in the 'Project' tab check the F# project.

This works for local testing (with F5) and I suspect would also manage deployment for you.

By on 3/6/2014 3:21 PM ()

so any asp.net hosting will do or something specific is required for F#. are there any memory requirements for F#

By on 1/3/2014 9:50 AM ()

so any asp.net hosting will do or something specific is required for F#. are there any memory requirements for F#

It's all IL in the end, so long as you are deploying assemblies. Just make sure to include FSharp.Core.dll, as some machines may not have the F# tools installed.

Also, you may find that the F# MVC 5 template works with most hosts: [link:visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com] This template gives you C#-based Razor views in an all F# project. We are currently working out the Web/Azure Deploy kinks. Otherwise, this template even runs on Azure (using Git deployment, for example).

By on 1/14/2014 8:20 PM ()

so any asp.net hosting will do or something specific is required for F#. are there any memory requirements for F#

Nope! The small project I described in the post was deployed to a standard ASP.NET commercial host and my current project is deployed to Azure. Deploy your asp.net/C# as the root of the web site, and manually deploy the F# DLL's to the Bin. I was not able to get automatic VS deployment working in VS2010 or 2012, even for a pure asp.net/C# project, and I used ftp to build the web site structure on the host. You deploy the .aspx and C# files as normal, and manually copy the F# dll's to the Bin on the host. It's a bit of a pain at first, but once you've got it working it is quite easy to update it.

By on 1/3/2014 5:44 PM ()

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