Wiz is designed to be the simplest way to build an http server in F#.

In this doc we will start with an empty project and get a simple server running on your local machine. It is assumed that you already have .Net installed.

I. Creating an New Wiz Project

Run the following to create a scaffold for a new ASP.Net project:

dotnet new web -lang F# --name MagicalApp -o magical_app

Feel free to delete Startup.fs, we won't be using it.

Now go into that new project directory and install the Wiz package:

dotnet add package Wiz

Replace the entire Program.fs file with the following:

namespace MagicalApp

module Program =
  open Wiz.Server

  [<EntryPoint>]
  let main args =
    genServer() |> run

II. Start the Server

Now run the server:

dotnet watch run

watch will cause the server to automatically restart on any changes

You should see the following output:

Building...
🔮 Wiz listening on http://localhost:9999

Now if you visit http://localhost:9999 you should see:

III. Explaining Server Configuration

The main line in the Program.fs is:

genServer() |> run

The genServer function creates a ServerConfig record which we pipe into run. To see the structure of the ServerConfig record, let's add printConfig between genServer and run:

genServer()
|> printConfig
|> run

That should print something like the following to your terminal:

{ AddServerHeader = false
  Host = "127.0.0.1"
  Port = 9999
  StaticFileConfig = { ServeStaticFiles = false
                       ServeIndexFiles = true
                       StaticDirectoryRoot = "wwwroot"
                       StaticRequestPathPrefix = "" }
  UseCompression = true
  Routes = [(GET, "/", <fun:genServer@461>)]
  DefaultStatusHandlers = map [] }
🔮 Wiz listening on http://localhost:9999

To configure our server (such as defining routes, changing the port, etc.) we just need to modify that record before passing it to run. See Server Configuration in the API for functions to modify the ServerConfig record.

IV. Adding a Route

Let's define a route to replace the Wiz default page. We need to add open Wiz.Route to have access to route related functions.

[code here]

Next, let's create the function we'll call whenever someone visits that route. We need to add open Wiz.Context to import function for interacting with the HttpContext.

[code here]