Calling Clojure from .NET

Question

I have been spending some time playing with Clojure-CLR. My REPL is working, I can call .NET classes from Clojure, but I have not been able to figure out calling compiled Clojur

Answer 1

I'd argue you should take another tack on this. All that gen-class stuff only exists in clojure as a hack to tell the compiler how to generate wrapper Java/C# classes around the native clojure reflective-dynamic variables.

I think it's better do all the "class" stuff in C# and keep your clojure code more native. Your choice. But if you want to go this way, write a wrapper like this:

using System;
using clojure.lang;

namespace ConsoleApplication {
    static class Hello {
        public static int Output(int a, int b) {
            RT.load("hello");
            var output = RT.var("code.clojure.example.hello", "output");
            return Convert.ToInt32(output.invoke(a, b));
        }
    }
}

That way your C# can look like normal C#

using System;

namespace ConsoleApplication {
    class Program {
        static void Main() {
            Console.WriteLine("3+12=" + Hello.Output(3, 12));
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

And the clojure can look like normal clojure:

(ns code.clojure.example.hello)

(defn output [a b]
  (+ a b))

This will work whether you compile it or just leave it as a script. (RT.load("hello") will load the script hello.clj if it exists, or otherwise it'll load the hello.clj.dll assembly).

This allows your clojure to look like clojure and your C# to look like C#. Plus it eliminates the static method clojure interop compiler bug (and any other interop bugs that may exist), since you're completely circumventing the clojure interop compiler.