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Fantom - Getting started


Fantom is an exciting new language that targets the Java VM and the CLR.
It borrows it's Syntax from Java but also adds many features and syntactic sugar created or borrowed from .NET, Groovy, Python, Erlang etc...

It's immediately familiar to a Java / .Net programmer but is much less painful to use (no boilerplate).

This is a "getting started" document.

Prerequisites


You should have a properly installed Java JDK(at least 1.5) installed (or .NET CLR, but Java recommended)
Make sure it's a JDK not just a JRE

You can check which Java version you have by running: java -version in a console / DOS prompt

  • OSX: Most recent OSX versions have the JDK 1.5 pre-installed, if not you can get an upgrade here:
http://developer.apple.com/java/download/

Installing Fantom


Full instructions here: http://fantom.org/doc/docTools/Setup.html

  • Extract the zip content to a folder of your choice.

for example c:\(Windows), /home/me/(Linux), /Users/me/(OSX)

This will create a fantom folder in there, for example /home/me/fantom-1.0.44

  • Rename the folder from 'fantom-xxx' to just 'fantom' if you wish (simpler)

From now on, I'll refer to the fantom directory as /home/me/fantom , adjust accordingly.

Now you will want to add the fantom binaries to your path:
  • Linux / OSX: export PATH=$PATH:/home/me/fantom/bin

you might want to add that to your ~/.bashrc so you don't have to type it again when you start a new shell.


  • Linux / OSX: You will want to run (from a shell) sh /home/me/fantom/adm/unixsetup, this will fix potential permission issues, otherwise you might not be able to execute fantom commands such as 'fan', 'fansh' and so on.

Checking the 'fan' command


The fan command is used to run fantom code, so really it needs to be working, so we will test it.

Start a shell, console or DOS prompt and run this command fan -version, this should display the fan version.

If that does not work(command not found), maybe the fan command is still not in your path, you could try:
cd /home/me/fantom/bin then fan -version or ./fan -version

If still not working, see: http://fantom.org/doc/docIntro/HelloWorld.html#setup

Trying the fantom shell (fansh)


Fan provides an interactive shell called fansh, it's great for trying out code quickly.
We will run a few commands through it to quickly test fan:

Assuming the command 'fan' was in your path, 'fansh' should be as well (otherwise cd /home/me/fantom/bin)

So let's start the fantom shell by typing in the shell fansh.

This should give you a prompt like this "fansh>", we are now in the fantom shell and can try some code.

Hello World (fansh)


Let's try a good old hello world (but fancier!)
fansh
We are running the following commands IN the fansh prompt
  • name := "John Doe"
After pressing "Return", fansh says "John Doe", this just tells us we created a String with value "John Doe"
Note that because fantom does type inference we didn't have to specify that 'name' was of type String as in Java.
  • Int age := 42
We created a Variable age with the value 42.
We specified it was an Int, though we could have left Int off and fantom would have done type inference.
  • echo("Hello $name, you are $age")
We tell fantom to echo(print to console) a string. fantom strings allow interpolation($variable), so it will print:
"Hello John Doe, you are 42". How cool is that for a Hello world :)
  • exit Exit the fantom shell.

Hello world(Script)


It's also possible to create a quick fantom script - basically a .fan file with a class with a main method.

A script is basically a single Class with a main() method.
It's important to note that a script can NOT import(using) other scripts - You should create a pod for that

Let's create Hello.fan:
Hello.fan
class Hello
{
  static Void main() 
  {
    name := "John Doe"
    age := 42
    echo("Hello $name, you are $age") 
  }
}

Now we can run it simply like this: fan Hello.fan

You can make hello.fan an executable(Unix) by adding #! /usr/bin/env fan as the very first line of the file.
On Windows you can too, but its' different: see http://fantom.org/doc/docTools/Setup.html#executableWindows

Hello world(Project)


The fantom shell and a quick script are is nice to try things out, but if we want to do anything serious you will want to create a real project(Pod).

  • Let's create a folder where we are going to put all our fantom projects:
For example/home/me/fantom_projects/

  • Now we need to create the proper structure for a fantom project, let's create a project "hello" with folders as follow:
Project structure
fantom_projects/
  - hello/          (Project base or "Pod")
    - build.fan     (build file)
    - pod.fan       (Pod meta-data)
    - fan/          (source code written in fantom goes here)
      -Hello.fan    (Our Hello.fan source file)

Note that this is the minimum structure, there could also be "java" folder for Java sources for example.

  • Create Hello.fan, with the same content as we used for the script test.

  • Now we create the build file
fantom_projects/hello/build.fan
// Build file is a special class (declarative)
using build                              // This uses the build pod(library)

class Build : BuildPod
{
  new make()
  {
    podName = "hello"
    summary = "A pod that likes to great you in the morning."
    depends = ["sys 1.0""]
    srcDirs = [`fan/`, `test/`]
  }
}


  • Now we can build(compile) our project:
cd /home/me/fantom_projects/hello/ then fan build.fan

  • This should create a pod file(~jar): /home/me/fantom/lib/fan/hello.pod

  • Now we can run the Application:
fan hello::Hello This means run The main() method of Class Hello of Pod hello.

If you have a Main.fan class with a main method, it will be called automatically, in other words fan hello is same as fan hello:Main.main()

Trying the examples


The fantom distribution comes with a nice set of example which are a great way to learn about more about fantom.

Here are some examples to try out: cd /home/me/fantom
  • FWT: fan examples/fwt/demo.fan fantom simple UI toolkit.
  • Java: fan examples/java/swing.fan an example that use Java swing from fantom.

Of course you can go look at those .fan file and examine the source code and learn things.

Also check out the fantom Cookbook.

More advanced topics


You can get more advanced informations from the fantom site

I also have a language reference (Cheat sheet) here: Fan Cheat Sheet

Interacting with Java


See http://wiki.colar.net/fan_java_ffi_example-_implement_java_interface_from_fan

Also, see the examples in /home/me/fantom/examples/java/

TODO
Using Fantom pods from Java
Mixed Java/Fantom sources project (Fantom based & Java/ant based)

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