Script#: C# to Javascript compiler

Nikhil Kothari has a post on a C# to Javascript compiler. Similar in approach to Google's Web Toolkit it allows you to program your client side web code in C# and compile it to Javascript. From this:

sing System;
using ScriptFX;
using ScriptFX.UI;

namespace HelloWorld {

    public class HelloWorldScriptlet : IScriptlet {

        private Button _okButton;
        private TextBox _nameTextBox;
        private Label _helloLabel;

        private XMLHttpRequest _request;

        public void Start() {
            _okButton = new Button(Document.GetElementById("okButton"));
            _nameTextBox = new TextBox(Document.GetElementById("nameTextBox"));
            _helloLabel = new Label(Document.GetElementById("helloLabel"));

            _okButton.Click += new EventHandler(OnOKButtonClick);
        }

        private void OnOKButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e) {
            Callback completedCallback = new Callback(this.OnRequestComplete);

            _request = new XMLHttpRequest();
            _request.Onreadystatechange = Delegate.Unwrap(completedCallback);
            _request.Open("GET", "Hello.axd?name=" + _nameTextBox.Text, /* async */ true);
            _request.Send(null);
        }

        private void OnRequestComplete() {
            if (_request.ReadyState == 4) {
                _request.Onreadystatechange = null;

                string greeting = _request.ResponseText;
                _helloLabel.Text = greeting;
            }
        }
    }
}

It generates:

HelloWorld.HelloWorldScriptlet = function Scenarios_HelloWorldScriptlet() {
}
HelloWorld.HelloWorldScriptlet.prototype = {
    _okButton: null,
    _nameTextBox: null,
    _helloLabel: null,
    _request: null,
    
    start: function Scenarios_HelloWorldScriptlet$start() {
        this._okButton = new ScriptFX.UI.Button(document.getElementById('okButton'));
        this._nameTextBox = new ScriptFX.UI.TextBox(document.getElementById('nameTextBox'));
        this._helloLabel = new ScriptFX.UI.Label(document.getElementById('helloLabel'));
        this._okButton.add_click(new Delegate(this, this._onOKButtonClick));
    },
    
    _onOKButtonClick: function Scenarios_HelloWorldScriptlet$_onOKButtonClick(sender, e) {
        var completedCallback = new Delegate(this, this._onRequestComplete);
        this._request = new XMLHttpRequest();
        this._request.onreadystatechange = Delegate.unwrap(completedCallback);
        this._request.open('GET', 'Hello.axd?name=' + this._nameTextBox.get_text(), true);
        this._request.send(null);
    },
    
    _onRequestComplete: function Scenarios_HelloWorldScriptlet$_onRequestComplete() {
        if (this._request.readyState == 4) {
            this._request.onreadystatechange = null;
            var greeting = this._request.responseText;
            this._helloLabel.set_text(greeting);
        }
    }
}

HelloWorld.HelloWorldScriptlet.registerClass('HelloWorld.HelloWorldScriptlet', null, ScriptFX.IScriptlet);

Generating Javascript from other languages seems to be getting popular. Another system that does this is Morfik. They have some compelling demos and appear to compile C#, Pascal, Basic and Java into Javascript.

Categories: web, javascript