Embedding JavaScript engine into .NET (C#)

Question

Hi, just wondering if anyone has ever tried embedding and actually integrating any js engine into the .net environment. I could find and actually use (after a LOT of pain and effort, since it's pretty outdated and not quite finished) spidermonkey-dotnet project. Anyone with experience in this area? Engines like SquirrelFish, V8..

Not that I'm not satisfied with Mozilla's Spidermonkey (using it for Rails-like miniframework for custom components inside the core ASP.NET application), but I'd still love to explore a bit further with the options. The command-line solutions are not what I'd need, I cannot rely on anything else than CLR, I need to call methods from/to JavaScript/C# objects.

// c# class
public class A
{
    public string Hello(string msg)
    {
        return msg + " whatewer";
    }
}

// js snippet
var a = new A();
console.log(a.Hello('Call me')); // i have a console.log implemented, don't worry, it's not a client-side code :)

Just to clarify - I'm not trying to actually program the application itself in server-side javascript. It's used solely for writing custom user subapplications (can be seen as some sort of DSL). It's much easier (and safer) to allow normal people programming in js than C#.

Answer 1

I guess I am still unclear about what it is you are trying to do, but JScript.NET might be worth looking into, though Managed JScript seems like it may be more appropriate for your needs (it is more like JavaScript than JScript.NET).

Personally, I thought it would be cool to integrate V8 somehow, but I didn't get past downloading the source code; wish I had the time to actually do something with it.

Answer 2

Script# compiles C# to js and is the brain child of one of the ASP.Net team. Rick Strahl also has some posts on embedding js as runtime engine for expression evaluation.

Answer 3

i believe all the major opensource JS engines (JavaScriptCore, SpiderMonkey, V8, and KJS) provide embedding APIs. The only one I am actually directly familiar with is JavaScriptCore (which is name of the JS engine the SquirrelFish lives in) which provides a pure C API. If memory serves (it's been a while since i used .NET) .NET has fairly good support for linking in C API's.

I'm honestly not sure what the API's for the other engines are like, but I do know that they all provide them.

That said, depending on your purposes JScript.NET may be best, as all of these other engines will require you to include them with your app, as JSC is the only one that actually ships with an OS, but that OS is MacOS :D

Answer 4

I'm searching for the same thing. Did you found a solution for embedding javascript in C# ? I saw ManagedJscript in ASP.NET future release but I can't afford to install this on a production software.

Answer 5

If the language isn't a problem (any sandboxed scripted one) then there's LUA for .NET. The Silverlight version of the .NET framework is also sandboxed afaik.

Answer 6

Use JSCRIPT.NET to get a library(dll) of the js . Then reference this dll in your .NET application and you are just there. DONE!

Answer 7

The open source JavaScript interpreter Jint (http://jint.codeplex.com) does exactly what you are looking for.

Answer 8

Try Javascript .NET:

http://javascriptdotnet.codeplex.com/

It implements Google V8. You can compile and run Javascript directly from .NET code with it, and supply CLI objects to be used by the Javascript code as well. And V8 is probably the best engine ever created in terms of performance, it generates native code from Javascript.

Answer 9

Hey take a look for Javascript .NET on codeplex (http://javascriptdotnet.codeplex.com/) with the version 0.3.1 there is some pretty sweet new features that will probly interest you.

Check out a sample code:

// Initialize the context
JavascriptContext context = new JavascriptContext();

// Setting the externals parameters of the context
context.SetParameter("console", new SystemConsole());
context.SetParameter("message", "Hello World !");
context.SetParameter("number", 1);

// Running the script
context.Run("var i; for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) console.Print(message + ' (' + i + ')'); number += i;");

// Getting a parameter
Console.WriteLine("number: " + context.GetParameter("number"));