May Functional Kats

How to Provide Mythical Types - a gentle introduction to writing your own F# type provider

Maybe you've been thinking about building an F# type provider, or maybe you're just curious how they work under the hood. Either way, join Michael in a walk through type provider creation, from new blank project through to injecting figures from myths and legends into the F# type system. Along the way we'll point out some of the joys and the limitations of current generation type providers, and give some suggestions on producing something that's actually useful at the end of the process.

Most of the code will be being demo'd from the front in an interactive fashion, but this is not a workshop: feel free to just turn up! If you do want to play with the code on the day, it will be available on memory stick and should work on Visual Studio 2012+ or recent versions of mono with the editor of your choice.

We'll be using the "facts and figures" sections from http://www.godchecker.com/ as our metadata to drive the type provider: if you have a particular mythology you've always wanted to use in a game/adventure/exterprise CRUD application feel free to grab some of the stat blocks in advance of the session, and we'll see if we can make something usable for you!

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About Michael

Michael Newton is the Technical Architect at 15below (a Brighton based travel software solutions company) by day, founding member of the F# Foundation by night. Michael is also responsible for internal developer training at 15below and maintainer of a small collection of F# open source projects. He is a facilitator of the F# Open Engineering group, when he remembers.

He blogs at blog.mavnn.co.uk (http://blog.mavnn.co.uk/), including tutorials, thoughts on software design, and write ups of many of the training sessions given at 15below.

He has not, unfortunately written any of the Mack Bolen the Executioner books, nor is he (fortunately) an expert in past life therapy. On the other hand, he is known to have a few interests outside of coding, including introducing his young son to the fine art of table top role playing and driving the sound desk at the local church.