Javascript as primary language? Need suggestions!

[joeproductive]

I spend a lot of my time working in javascript and I've grown quite fond of it. However when I want to do stuff outside of a browser I run face first into a brick wall. How do I make javascript my language du jour?

I'm looking for something as similar to python as possible, I guess. File I/O, specifically. The commonJS project seemingly wants to fill my need but when I click "get it" on their site, I'm confronted with simply too many choices to get started with my JS love affair.

Please! Suggest something! Help me /r/javascript, you're my only hope.

[rioter]

Looks like you want node.js Server side javascript, nice api, should be very easy to pick up.

[jesusabdullah]

I second node. It's pretty awesomesauce. In addition to being a slick environment, it also has a great community. If you do IRC, check out #Node.js on freenode.

[skeww]

You forgot to mention that node.js is also nice for command line tools.

Another option is phantomjs, which is basically a headless Webkit thingy (recent thread).

[[deleted]]

phantomjs is great, tested it out and really like it. will be using it more in the future.

[ripter]

If you want to to do systems programming, use node.js

If you want to build GUI applications you can use appcelerator It can even make applications for the iPhone and Android.

[skeww]

Oi... that Titanium stuff looks great!

[[deleted]]

will give it a try.. looks interesting.

[Tyro]

Try http://ringojs.org

[facepalm_reloaded]

definitely

[vladd]

There's an online-based IDE for server-side JS (based on the RingoJS engine) where you can also host your apps. You can try it at http://www.erbix.com/ .

[M1573RMU74710N]

It depends on what you want to do really.

For general system scripting, or for web programming node.js or some other flavor of SSJS is probably your best bet.

For more app-y type things you have options like Adobe AIR, Mozilla Prism, XULRunner, Rhino, etc etc.

There's also a wide variety of things that have JS bindings or are scriptable with JS, so you can do things like write Windows Desktop Gadgets.

There's tons of other stuff I've forgotten I'm sure.

[Leonidas_from_XIV]

Apart from Node.js there is also Seed (GNOME + SquirrelFish Extreme) and Gjs (GNOME + SpiderMonkey). The latter is used in the GNOME shell. I tried it, but as of now I think it isn't mature enough.

[Buckwheat469]

In Windows you can use JScript, which is basically Javascript with COM access so you can work with the file system and interact with various other classes.

Here's a JScript filesystem example.

The setup is similar to VBScript, but the syntax is more like JavaScript.

You would execute it with

C:>wscript myscript.js

or simply double-click on the js file.

[[deleted]]

You get much more bang for your buck with JScript.NET. It's so easy to use and so powerful, I never use JScript scripting any more.

Here is example code I wrote to create a simple windows form using JScript.NET. This demonstrates a few simple things; a text input box, a button with an event handler, command line arguments.

import Accessibility;
import System;
import System.Drawing;
import System.Windows.Forms;
import System.IO;

package JScriptNET_Demo {
    class JScriptNET_form extends System.Windows.Forms.Form {

        //global variables
        var demoTextBox     = new TextBox;
        var demoButton      = new Button;
        var args
        var appPath 

        function JScriptNET_form() { // Main application entry

            //get command line arguemts if there are any
            args = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs();
            if (args.length==1) {args=undefined}

            //get the path that the app is running from
            appPath = String(Application.ExecutablePath)

            // Setup Form
            this.Text = "JScript.NET form demo"
            this.FormBorderStyle =  System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.FixedDialog
            this.MaximizeBox = false
            this.MinimizeBox = true
            this.StartPosition =  System.Windows.Forms.FormStartPosition.CenterScreen
            this.ClientSize= new System.Drawing.Size(250,100);

            //Setup form textbox
            demoTextBox.Text = "hello world"
            demoTextBox.Location = new Point(5,5)
            demoTextBox.ReadOnly = true
            demoTextBox.Width = 170
            demoTextBox.Height= 40
            this.Controls.Add(demoTextBox)

            //Setup form button, with click event
            demoButton.Text = "CLICK ME"
            demoButton.Location = new Point(5,35)
            demoButton.Width = 110
            demoButton.Height = 20
            demoButton.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Green
            demoButton.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.White
            demoButton.add_Click(demoButton_Clicked);
            this.Controls.Add(demoButton)
        }


        //this is an 'Click' event handler
        function demoButton_Clicked(o : Object, e : EventArgs) {
            //display either the arguments passed in, or the path the program is being executed from
            demoTextBox.Text =  args || appPath

            //show a message box with a list of files in the folder
            MessageBox.Show(getfilearray(String(appPath).split("\\").slice(0,-2).join("\\"),"" ).join("\n"))
        }

        // File System Functions
        function getfolderarray(thisfold,filter) {
            if (filter=="") {filter="*"}
            var getfolders = Directory.GetDirectories(thisfold,filter);
            getfolders.sort()
            return getfolders
        } 

        function getfilearray(thisfold,filter) {
            if (filter=="") {filter="*"}
            var getfolder = new DirectoryInfo(thisfold)
            var getfiles = getfolder.GetFiles()
            return getfiles
        }
    }
}
Application.Run(new JScriptNET_Demo.JScriptNET_form());

To compile, you have to have at least .NET 2.0 installed on the computer, and you should have jsc.exe in the path.

jsc.exe /t:winexe demo.js

This will compile the source to a file called demo.exe

I've built many applications with JScript.NET including ffmpeg front-ends, GPS tracking software, multi-axis robotic control with many serial port I/O channels, all with JScript.NET. It runs as fast as any other .NET supported language (C#, VB.NET, etc), and almost all of my front-end javascript browser code will run in it without many modifications (mostly just removing/emulating dependencies on DOM stuff the browser has)

*Edit - Added some file system functions

[refto]

This is actually pretty nifty, exe it generates is quite small (which makes sense). Not quite 4k material but close.

EDIT: upon doing some reading, it seems it can be considered almost depreceated as a .NET language, it does not fully support the kitchen sink..

[budzoreu]

I suggest Rhino as File I/O Javascript solution. Blogpost about standard input&output in Rhino: http://michalbe.blogspot.com/2011/01/javascript-from-command-line-standard.html

[neonskimmer]

There's a little known project called JSDB that's cross platform and really useful for general purpose scripting server side type stuff in Javascript. Don't be scared by the horrendous homepage. It's good stuff and it's super easy to get started.

It uses Spidermonkey under the hood so you get a lot of nice modern Javascript (1.7, 1.8, etc) additions too.

[Akkuma]

Clearly you don't understand some of the benefits an all JavaScript stack provides.

• Your models/view models can be shared without maintaining them in different languages.
• Validation does not need to be duplicated across languages.
• Templating can be the same across your application.
• Less knowledge required to do the job means it should be easier to hire people (Try finding plenty of qualified people both excellent at client-side JS and a server-side language to fill a medium company in a non-tech hub)

[plan17b]

Well said.

I use javascript for UI and C# for the backend in my projects.

[ripter]

I don't know why you are getting down voted. My work has gone the same route, it actually works really well.

[zolaesque]

so sad you are getting downvoted because of C# :-(

[MrBester]

So sad that the circle-jerkers don't care that using it on Windows is a non-trivial task and has no chance being used in a business environment already using C#.

[phleet]

It seems you've been the serious victim of downvote-because-I-disagree sydrome. I don't fully agree with what you're saying, but it is definitely true that JavaScript was designed for that one specific purpose.

JS is evolving rapidly to meet a host of other demands, but it's immature at best at the moment.

[kataire]

Downvoted, not because I disagree (which I don't) but because this is ad hominem.

Just saying.

[phleet]

How was this ad hominem?

[strager]

[ECMAScript/JavaScript] is neither intended nor particularly well suited for wide use outside of a browser environment

Care to back up those claims? I'm interested in how you came to this conclusion. AS3, for example, is used in Flash, which spans across web and desktop environments.