Building ASP Pages

ASP provides a powerful and extensible framework for creating server-side scripts with any COM compliant scripting or programming language. This section is intended to teach the fundamentals of using a scripting language to create an .asp file. You will learn how to accomplish a wide range of basic programming tasks, from creating a loop to manipulating a database and processing transactions. Whether you are a beginning or experienced scripter, you can envision the topics in this section as development goals, that is, as demonstrations intended to encourage you by suggesting more sophisticated ways in which you can utilize ASP. This can lead to applications that perform better and are more maintainable.

Although these topics introduce some scripting and programming concepts, they are not intended to teach you a scripting language. Microsoft scripting languages (Microsoft VBScript and Microsoft JScript) provide their own documentation, and many additional scripting books are available from your local bookseller. So, if you are new to scripting, take advantage of the many books, classes, and Internet resources which can help you to master these languages.

Important When you initially install IIS, the service is installed in a highly secure mode. Because IIS only serves static content by default, you must enable features such as ASP, ASP.NET, CGI, ISAPI, and WebDAV, if you need them. To enable these features, from IIS Manager, click Web Service Extensions under local computer.

This section includes:

• Creating an ASP Page: Describes an ASP file and explains how to add script commands to a page.
• Working with Scripting Languages: Explains how to set the primary language and how to use VBScript and JScript in server scripts.
• Using Variables and Constants: Provides an introduction to using variables in ASP scripts and explains how to access constant definitions.
• Interacting with Client-Side Scripts: Shows how to write server-side scripts that create and interact with client-side scripts.
• Writing Procedures: Describes how to define procedures (functions and subroutines) and call them from server-side scripts.
• Working with Collections: Describes how to access items in a built-in object's collections, including access by iterating through a collection.
• Processing User Input: Explains how to collect and process information gathered from an HTML form.
• Using Components and Objects: Explains how to create an instance of an object provided by a COM component, how to use the ASP built-in objects, and how to use the methods and properties of any object.
• Setting Object Scope: Demonstrates the scope, or extent, of an object and describes how to create session and application scoped objects.
• Sending Content to the Browser: Describes how to control the ways in which pages are sent to a browser.
• Including Files: Explains how to use the #include statement to insert the contents of a file into an .asp file.
• Managing Sessions: Describes how to preserve information about a user.
• Accessing a Data Source: Explains how to use ASP and Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to retrieve information from a database.
• Debugging ASP Scripts: Describes how to use the Microsoft Script Debugger to find and eliminate errors in your scripts.
• ASP Built-In Object Quick Reference Card: Contains quick reference information about ASP built-in objects.

• For more information about developing programmatically advanced collections of scripts called applications, see Developing Web Applications.
• For more information about designing Web applications, see Design Decisions.