ASP and Web Development Tips
Read these 7 ASP and Web Development Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Web Development tips and hundreds of other topics.
Close those objects!
When you instantiate an obbect, such as a connection, recordset, filesystemobject, etc., remember to .close them, and to also set them to "nothing". Each time an object is created, memory is used up. Yes, when you exit a function the object instantiated within them go out of scope and supposedly are close, but it's a good programming practice to close and free up anyway.
For example:
dim rs
set rs = getUsersRS()
if not rs.eof then
do while not rs.eof
'do something here
rs.movenext
loop
end if
rs.close
if not rs is nothing then set rs = nothing
this effectively kills off the recordset object rs.
What are Include files?
In web development, reusable bits of asp, perl or html code called include files are used to maintain consistency and provide a basic level of dynamic delivery when used in html templating. This can be very handy when working on a large site as you can effectively change all the pages that reuse the include by only making code changes to the appropriate include file.
Commonly Used ASP Objects: Request.Form(Element)[(Index)|.Count]
This collection property allows you to contain and retrieve values POSTed through a website FORM. Among other things it can allow you to personalize a user experience by pre-populating other form elements or generating dynamic content.
What are Active Server Pages?
Active server pages are dynamically generated web pages served by IIS server-side technology from Microsoft. ASP objects are used to create dynamic elements on web pages. ASP pages have the extension .asp and the most commonly used scripting language or writing ASP is VBScript, although you can use many other common scripting languages.
Close those objects!
When you instantiate an obbect, such as a connection, recordset, filesystemobject, etc., remember to .close them, and to also set them to "nothing". Each time an object is created, memory is used up. Yes, when you exit a function the object instantiated within them go out of scope and supposedly are close, but it's a good programming practice to close and free up anyway.
For example:
dim rs
set rs = getUsersRS()
if not rs.eof then
do while not rs.eof
'do something here
rs.movenext
loop
end if
rs.close
if not rs is nothing then set rs = nothing
this effectively kills off the recordset object rs.
How do ASP pages work?
The words active server pages indicate this is a server-side process. When a customer comes to your home page (index.asp), their browser will request that page from your server. Once the file has been located, the page code is processed by the server and generates the html code to display in the user's browser. For example, you might use an asp script to retrieve a cookie with a return customer's name to personalize your home page for them.
Common Website programming languages
There are numerous programming languages to create websites and web applications with. Following are a few of the most common.
- HTML - Use Hypertext Markup Language for basic website design using text and images, HTML is a simple is easy to learn, and can be written in a simple text editor.
- ASP - Active Server Pages are HTML pages that include language-independent cross-platform server-side scripts created by Microsoft. They are easy to use and very flexible if you use a Microsoft web server.
- JSP - Similar to ASP, Java Server Pages contain servlets - little programs that run on your web server that produce dynamic content. JSP pages are not limited to Microsoft web servers.
- ASP.NET technology is Microsoft's new programming language and it is thought that it will eventually replace standard ASP. .NET development is somewhat slower than ASP but it is incredible stable, runs faster and opens up many new programming possibilities.
| Guru Spotlight |
| Susan Sayour |
