SQLProvider VS Saturn

For completeness, there is also the SqlDataProvider, which I only tried out a little years ago, before composibility was baked in. Worth a look.

Have you heard of type providers? https://fsprojects.github.io/SQLProvider/ I think this library might be what you are looking for

Database: SQL or Event Store. If SQL, One of https://fsprojects.github.io/SQLProvider/, https://github.com/Dzoukr/Dapper.FSharp or https://github.com/SQLStreamStore/SQLStreamStore

One of the more popular Type Providers I used is the SQL Provider, but even it has severe limitations when it comes to .NET Core.

There was a wave of popularity in 2017 as well. I used to work on it full time back then, and enjoyed it a lot. The SQLProvider [0] and other type providers like it are super impressive!

[0] https://fsprojects.github.io/SQLProvider/

(1) F# Type Providers still blow my mind.

Strongly typed SQL/XML/CSV/JSON without boilerplate is a massive leap forward, and it's a shame that it hasn't caught on.

https://fsprojects.github.io/SQLProvider/#Example

Like this?

So... I'm a little bit lost here. I must say, I love this language, but documentation is definitely not its greatest strength. I've looked at the SQLProvider documentation and found no information. Then I looked through the repository issues and found a lot of people with similar issues and, even though they should theoretically be solved with version 1.2, I tried doing what ended up working for them, with little luck. I've tried different combinations of library targets and dependencies versions but none worked.

So when I clone a typical open source F# project from GitHub (e.g. SQLProvider, to pick a recent one that I wrestled with), I'm often at a loss how to build and debug the thing. I've figured out that running build.cmd is usually a good place to start, but then what? Can I still open the .sln in Visual Studio and build/debug it there?

Today I don't have a new series to start with but rather a simple example which may or may not grow in another blog series. For the moment we'll talk about how to do File uploads to an F# backend powered by Falco and Saturn so let's get started!

Bix is a micro-framework designed with F# in mind and that runs on both Deno and Bun! and in theory it also should even run in a service worker! (intercepting fetch requests) although I haven't tested that yet, it offers a general purpose handler that coupled with a set of route definitions it can bring a Giraffe/Saturn like framework to life in JavaScript runtimes which is incredibly awesome! useful? maybe not 😅, but awesome indeed. Let's see some code for it

Backend: Most likely it would be a toss between https://saturnframework.org or https://giraffe.wiki. They both combins the extremely good type system in F# combined with the ease of a minimal API.

The "S" stands for Saturn. Suave is not very popular.

While for a proof of concept Suave did great, I switched it in favor of Saturn given my familiarity with it and some ASP.NET code.

Saturn is heavily inspired by phoenix and has similar generators, and a channel system that is similar. As well as almost the exact same syntax for the router with plugs and all.

Today we'll try to keep it as simple as possible but no promises, since this entry is about creating web servers in F# using Saturn and not only that, we'll also try to go for a more traditional'ish MVC.

🌱release on github