Getting Setup for JavaScript Testing with Pavlov

I've talked about testing CoffeeScript with Pavlov in a previous post. Today, I'm going to talk about a couple of ways to quickly get started with Pavlov--a BDD API that sits on top of QUnit--in an ASP.NET web app.

In the past, whenever I wanted to start creating Pavlov specs, I would go out to the Pavlov GitHub site, grab the appropriate files, and add them to my web app. While this process isn't all that time consuming, there is now a better way. Now I can simply install the Pavlov NuGet package using the NuGet Visual Studio Extension. This package adds a folder named Specs under the Scripts folder that includes a barebones html file and pavlov.js.

An example of what the file structure looks like after this package is installed is shown below:

If I prefer to have a simple example to start with, I can alternatively install the Pavlov.Sample package. This adds the same files as the Pavlov package, but also includes an example.specs.js file with the code from the example on the Pavlov GitHub site.

Lastly, I've been writing a fair amount of CoffeeScript lately, so I may prefer to have the sample specs written in CoffeeScript. All that is needed for this is to make sure that Mindscape Web WorkBench Visual Studio Extension is installed (this is a onetime install) and then install the Pavlov.Coffee NuGet package. The files are then added to the project including a example.specs.coffee file that looks like this:

Building F# Solutions in Visual Studio 11

I love to learn about new technology, seek to continually improve, and always look for ways to make things easier. I then do all that I can to share the knowledge, code, and/or tools that help to achieve these goals. With these goals in mind, I've joined with several friends in the creation of a new blogging community named Fresh Brewed Code. I'd strongly recommend keeping a close eye on the other Fresh Brewed Coders, as they will be producing some awesome content. You can see the announcement at http://freshbrewedcode.com/blog/2011/11/23/welcome-to-fresh-brewed-code/.

One of the other ways that I have attempted to achieve the goals mentioned above is through the creation of a number of Visual Studio project and item templates. Over the last several days, there have been updates to almost all of these templates. In this post I'll describe the changes that have been made--most of which have been implemented to allow support for the Developer Preview of Visual Studio 11 and F# 3.0.

I'm sure that you have used Visual Studio Gallery by now, but just in case you haven't yet had the chance, see http://bloggemdano.blogspot.com/2010/08/f-templates-now-on-visual-studio.html for how to get started. A screenshot of the Online templates view from the Developer Preview of Visual Studio 11 is shown below:

ASP.NET MVC:

F# and C# ASP.NET MVC3 - This project template generates the standard ASP.NET MVC 3 template output with separate projects for the view (ASPX in a C# project) and controllers/models (in a F# project). The latest release (version 1.3) adds support for Visual Studio 11 and F# 3.0. You will need to install the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update (see http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc3 and make sure to download/install the correct version for Visual Studio 10 or Visual Studio 11) to use this template.

F# C# MVC 3  - This is a dynamic project template that generates an empty ASP.NET MVC 3 solution with separate projects for view (C# - either ASPX or Razor), core (F#), and an optional F# project for unit tests. The template is based on the MSDN Magazine article entitled "Authoring an F#/C# VSIX Project Template" which can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh456399.aspx. You will need to install the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update (see http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc3 and make sure to download/install the correct version for Visual Studio 10 or Visual Studio 11) to use this template. Version 1.1 adds support for Visual Studio 11 and F# 3.0.

WPF:

F# Windows App (WPF, MVVM) - This project template generates a F# WPF solution with logical separation between View, ViewModel, Model, and Repository. The latest release (version 1.8) resolves a few bugs and adds support for Visual Studio 11 and F# 3.0.

F# and C# Windows App (WPF, MVVM) - This is a project template that generates a WPF solution with separation between View (C#), ViewModel (F#), Model (F#), and Repository (F#). The latest release (version 1.7) resolves a few bugs and adds support for Visual Studio 11 and F# 3.0.  


Web Service:

F# and C# Web Service (ASP.NET, WSDL) - This is a project template that generates a Web Service (WSDL) solution with separate projects for web (C#), services (F#), and contracts (F#). The underlying technology is Windows Communication Foundation. Version 1.5 adds support for Visual Studio 11 and F# 3.0.

Silverlight:

F# C# Web App (Silverlight) - This project template generates a Silverlight solution with separate projects for View (C#) and Core (F#).  The Core project includes logical separation between ViewModel, Model, and RemoteFacade. You should install the Silverlight 4 developer tools and/or the Silverlight 5 developer tools plus the April 2011 F# CTP. Version 1.2 adds support for Visual Studio 11 and includes a template wizard dialog that allows selection of Silverlight version 4 or 5. The determination of whether to display the wizard dialog is triggered off of the installed F# Silverlight client version. It will only display if both 4 and 5 are installed. Note: There are not yet F# 3.0 Silverlight DLLs. Because of this, the current version only support F# 2.0.

F# Web Application (Silverlight) - This F# project template generates a Silverlight project with logical separation between View, ViewModel, Model, and RemoteFacade. You should install the Silverlight 4 developer tools and/or the Silverlight 5 developer tools plus the April 2011 F# CTP. Version 1.4 adds support for Visual Studio 11 and includes a dialog that allows selection of the desired Silverlight Version 4 or 5 (depending on installations). Note: There are not yet F# 3.0 Silverlight DLLs. Because of this, the current version only support F# 2.0.

F# Empty Web Application (Silverlight) - This project template is similar to the F# Web Application (Silverlight) template; however, it does not include all of the example code. You should install the Silverlight 4 developer tools and/or the Silverlight 5 developer tools plus the April 2011 F# CTP. Version 1.1 adds support for Visual Studio 11, removes the C# host application, adds support to generate an HTML test file, and provides functionality to select the desired Silverlight version 4 or 5 (depending on the installation). Note: There are not yet F# 3.0 Silverlight DLLs. Because of this, the current version only support F# 2.0.

F# 2.0 Silverlight Library (for Visual Studio 11) - This is a project template that generates a F# 2.0 Silverlight project. It targets Visual Studio 11 only and will only be needed temporarily. You can read more about this template at http://bloggemdano.blogspot.com/2011/11/f-silverlight-library-template-in.html. Note: There are not yet F# 3.0 Silverlight DLLs. Because of this, the current version only support F# 2.0.

XAML Item Templates:

F# XAML Item Templates - This Visual Studio Extension provides a number of item templates that make working with F# XAML based projects (i.e. the WPF, Silverlight, and/or Windows Phone 7 project templates) much easier. Without these item templates adding new XAML files to one of these projects is a bit of a pain. You have to create a text or xml file, change the extension to .xaml, manually add the default XAML code, and change the Build Action for the .xaml file to Resource. Version 1.1 adds item templates for Windows Phone 7 (I'll talk more about this in a future post) and adds support for Visual Studio 11.
 
Project Templates That Do Not Currently Support Visual Studio 11:

Since the Developer Preview of Visual Studio 11 does not currently support Windows Phone 7 development, the Windows Phone 7 templates (i.e. C# WP7 with Caliburn.Micro, F# and C# Win Phone App (Silverlight), F# and C# Win Phone List App (Silverlight), and F# and C# Win Phone Panorama) have not yet been updated to support Visual Studio 11. This will be added as soon as a release of Visual Studio 11 is provided that does include this support.

F# and C# Web App (ASP.NET, MVC 2) - There is not currently an ASP.NET MVC 2 install for Visual Studio 11 and I don't anticipate one to ever be provided. Because of this, I have not (and do not intend to) add support for Visual Studio 11 to this project template.

A Pinch of CoffeeScript Sugar - Part 1

In this series, I plan to point out and provide a few examples of some cool syntactic sugar provided by CoffeeScript. In this post, I'll talk about destructuring assignment and splats.

I've shown how to write a jQuery plugin in CoffeeScript in a previous post. In the following example, I take that simple jQuery plugin and add a little more sugar.

The above example is based on the recommendations defined in the jQuery Plugins/Authoring documentation. There are a couple of interesting aspects of this code.

Line 10 (i.e. [_, args...] = arguments) is using two cool CoffeeScript features. The first is something called destructuring assignment. This feature allows you to take data from arrays or objects and place that data into something more wieldy. In this case, we are taking the JavaScript arguments object, destructuring it, and assigning all of the arguments except the first one to an array named args. This eliminates the need for me to type Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1). If I had not used a splat (i.e ...), this would have assigned only the second argument to args. Note: Destructuring assignment has been added to JavaScript 1.7.

The second thing of interest on this line (which I've already briefly mentioned) is the use of the splat. The splat allows you to easily work with anything that involves a variable number of arguments. Since line 10 potentially involves more than 2 passed arguments, this is a perfect place to use a splat. As I mentioned before, the use of the splat in this case will generate JavaScript to slice the arguments array i.e. Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1).

Lines 11 and 13 also use a splat, but the reasoning behind its use on these lines is slightly different. While this is still related to a varying number of arguments, it has to do with the passing of those arguments to a function rather than retrieval of the additional argument values. The splat in this case will generate JavaScript that uses the Function.apply method.

A little bit of sugar can make things much sweeter (ug...that was bad). I hope you find this post helpful and that you find lots of uses for the described features.

F# Silverlight Library Template in Visual Studio 11

If you have played with Visual Studio 11 much, you may have noticed that there isn't a F# Silverlight Library template out-of-the-box. This is presumably due to the fact that the current release of Visual Studio 11 is just a developer preview and there doesn't appear to be a version of F# 3.0 for Silverlight just yet. However, this doesn't stop you from creating Silverlight projects that target F# 2.0 in Visual Studio 11. In order to help you do this, I've created a project template that allows you to create a F# 2.0 Silverlight Library in Visual Studio 11. You can download the VSIX from here.

The following prerequisites exist for using this library:

1. Download and install the VS2011 Preview with F# 3.0 (see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2011/09/14/f-3-0-developer-preview-now-available.aspx for more information).

2. Download and install the Microsoft F#, April 2011 CTP from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11100. 

New F# Windows Phone Library Project Template

There is a new F# Windows Phone Library project template now available on Visual Studio Gallery. This project template allows you to add a new F# library project to a Windows Phone solution rather than having to start with one of the solution templates that is initialized with both a C# and F# project.

As an example, you could easily build the F# and C# Win Phone App (Silverlight) solution by doing the following:

1. Create a new C# Windows Phone Application (Silverlight).
2. Add a new F# Windows Phone Library project to the solution.
3. Add a new XML file to the F# project named MainPage.xaml.
4. Add content to the MainPage.xaml file as shown here (also change the Build Action option to Resource and the Copy to Output Directory option to Copy always).
5. Add the code from here to the File1.fs file.
6. Delete the MainPage.xaml and associated code-behind file from the C# project.
7. Change the App.xaml.cs code in the C# project to what is shown here (Note: You'll likely need to change the namespace).
8. Change the App.xaml code in the C# project to what is shown here (Note: You'll likely need to change the namespace).
9. Edit the properties of the C# project and change the Startup object drop down to the *.AppHost object.
10. Edit the WMAppManifest.xml file and change:

<DefaultTask  Name ="_default" NavigationPage="MainPage.xaml"/>

to 

<DefaultTask  Name ="_default"/>

11. Finally, add a reference to the F# project, build, and test.

A Coder Interview with Dan Mohl

A Coder Interview With Dan Mohl by Terrence Dorsey (@tpdorsey) was recently published in the articles section of The Code Project site. In it, I talk about tools, technology, and frameworks that interest me (F#, CoffeeScript, Node.js, etc.), my background, how the community has influenced my coding, and much more.

You can find the article at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/interviews/Interview-Dan-Mohl.aspx.