.NET Interop

[bbqchickenrobot]

Do we have to declare / import every single .net type we want to work with?! With every signature?

// Call .NET types directly from TypeScript
@DotNetType("System.Text.StringBuilder")
declare class StringBuilder {
    constructor();
    append(value: string): StringBuilder;
    toString(): string;
}

@DotNetType("System.TimeSpan")
declare class TimeSpan {
    static fromHours(value: number): TimeSpan;
    readonly totalMinutes: number;
}

const sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("1.5 hours = ");
sb.append(`${TimeSpan.fromHours(1.5).totalMinutes} minutes`);
console.log(sb.toString());

I work with hundreds and hundreds of .net types daily - this is a monumental task to declare each type. Is there a plan to auto-import this with usings statements down the road ? maybe a usings.ts file so that the regular .ts files don't even need an import statements? Or perhaps a source generator to read the BCL from an import statement and generate a typescript .net definitions on build (caching of course)? Not sure how F# does it - but that's a massive hurdle to using this library and will stifle adoption outside of a playground scenario.

[nickna]

You're right that this is tedious.
I have a slightly better pattern for using imports like this:

import { Widget } from "dotnet:MyLib.Widget";
import { JsonConvert } from "dotnet:Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert";

This will ship in the next SharpTS release. It's currently in the origin/main branch if you want to try it out sooner.

There is also a CLI argument for generating declaration metadata --gen-cli, but I personally prefer using imports and letting SharpTS handle it.

There are tickets attached to this thread that discuss the work. Let me know what you think, or if you have other ideas for simplifying the usage of .NET libraries.