Professional F# 2.0

FOREWORD xxi

INTRODUCTION xxiii

PART 0: BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER 1: PRIMER 3

Setup 5

It’s that Time of Year Again… 7

Strategy 10

The Delegate Strategy 12

Lambda Calculus (Briefly) 17

Type Inference 22

Immutability 26

Expressions, not Statements 27

Summary 28

PART I: BASICS

CHAPTER 2: LEXICAL STRUCTURE 31

Comments 31

Identifiers 32

Preprocessor Directives 33

Significant Whitespace 34

Summary 35

CHAPTER 3: PRIMITIVE TYPES 37

Boolean 37

Numeric Types 38

Bitwise Operations 40

Floating-Point Types 40

Arithmetic Conversions 41

String and Character Types 42

Unit 43

Units of Measure Types 43

Literal Values 44

Summary 45

CHAPTER 4: CONTROL FLOW 47

Basic Decisions: if 47

Looping: while/do 49

Looping: for 50

Exceptions 50

Summary 53

CHAPTER 5: COMPOSITE TYPES 55

Option Types 55

Tuples 58

Arrays 60

Lists 65

Using Lists and Arrays 72

Sequences 74

Maps 79

Sets 82

Summary 83

CHAPTER 6: PATTERN MATCHING 85

Basics 85

Pattern Types 88

Pattern Guards 94

Active Patterns 95

Summary 102

PART II: OBJECTS

CHAPTER 7: COMPLEX COMPOSITE TYPES 105

Type Abbreviations 105

Enum Types 106

Discriminated Union Types 109

Structs 114

Record Types 119

Summary 123

CHAPTER 8: CLASSES 125

Basics 125

Members 132

Static Members 146

Delegates and Events 149

Access Modifiers 155

Type Extensions 157

Summary 159

CHAPTER 9: INHERITANCE 161

Basics 161

Overriding 166

Casting 171

Interfaces 177

Object Expressions 181

Summary 181

CHAPTER 10: GENERICS 183

Basics 183

Type Constraints 186

Statically Resolved Type Parameters 189

Summary 190

CHAPTER 11: PACKAGING 191

Namespaces 191

Modules 193

Summary 195

CHAPTER 12: CUSTOM ATTRIBUTES 197

Using Custom Attributes 197

Creation and Consumption 203

CHAPTER 13: FUNCTIONS 209

Traditional Function Calls 209

Mathematical Functions 210

Coming from C# 211

Function Arguments and Return Values 211

Partial Application 215

Functions as First Class 218

Summary 223

CHAPTER 14: IMMUTABLE DATA 225

The Problem with State 225

State Safety 226

Data Mutation 232

Performance Considerations 239

Summary 245

CHAPTER 15: DATA TYPES 247

Ambiguously Typed Data 247

Failing Fast 248

Specificity 248

Summary 255

CHAPTER 16: LIST PROCESSING 257

Collection Abstractions 257

Module Functions 258

Collection Subsets 258

Element Transformations 260

Accumulators 263

Summary 267

CHAPTER 17: PIPELINING AND COMPOSITION 269

Basic Composition and Pipelining 269

Applying Pipelining and Composition 275

Summary 280

PART IV: APPLICATIONS

CHAPTER 18: C# 283

Overview 283

Calling C# Libraries from F# 284

Calling F# Libraries from C# 289

Rules of Thumb for Writing F# APIs 294

Summary 295

CHAPTER 19: DATABASES 297

Overview 297

Retrieving Data Using ADO.NET 298

F# and Object Relational Mapping 302

Introducing F# Active Record (FAR) 303

How FAR Works 306

Summary 315

CHAPTER 20: XML 317

Overview 317

F# and LINQ-to-XML 318

F# and XML DOM 325

F#, XML, and Active Patterns 329

Summary 339

CHAPTER 21: ASP.NET MVC 341

Overview 341

FORECAST’R — The World’s Simplest Weather

Forecast Site 342

Summary 355

CHAPTER 22: SILVERLIGHT 357

Overview 357

Visual Studio Project Templates 360

The Silverlight Toolkit 365

Data Binding 368

Calculating Moving Average 372

Putting It All Together 373

Summary 376

CHAPTER 23: SERVICES 377

Overview 377

An F#-Based Weather Service 378

Leveraging the Domain Model 380

Writing the Service Controller 381

Consuming Services 385

Summary 390

INDEX 391