Lesson 33. Creating type provider-backed APIs
So far in this unit, you’ve looked at various types providers; hopefully, you now get the gist of how they typically operate as well as the sorts of features and pitfalls to be aware of so that you can explore and try out other ones yourself. This lesson shows how to quickly create APIs driven by type providers that other components can easily consume. You’ll learn
- How coupling to type providers can affect your application
- How to create APIs over type providers
- When to create decoupled APIs
Just so that we’re on the same page here, let’s recap what I mean by a type provider–backed API. So far, you’ve looked at using type providers in an exploratory mode—for example, analyzing data within a single script. But there’s nothing to stop you from integrating type providers within the context of a standalone application as well—be they console applications or web apps, whether 100% F# or hybrid language applications. There are, however, some things that are worth being aware of before trying to integrate a type provider into an application.