Designing Active Server Pages

Developers of Active Server Pages often reinvent the wheel. Their background in Web design, with its separate HTML page for each viewable Web page on a site, leads many ASP developers to create a distinct ASP page each time they think they need one. Often times, these pages are functionally similar. With intelligent planning, an ASP developer stands to save a great deal of time by creating reusable ASP pages. This text is tailor-made for these developers. This text is written for the intermediate to advanced user. Many other books on ASP focus on using VBScript, even though ASP supports an array of scripting languages, including JScript and PerlScript. "Designing Active Server Pages" shows how to start using these other languages. The latest version of the scripting engines (Version 5.1 for VBScript) adds new features not available before the 5.0 release. These features include class support for VBScript, and Regular Expression searching through the use of a COM object. The book explains why using classes in VBScript is beneficial, and demonstrates the power of regular expression searching. It shows how to simplify the process by only requiring one ASP page to handle ALL of the Forms throughout a web site, thus reducing the amount of code one has to write. Topics include: using various Microsoft and third-party components to enhance ASP pages; creating components using VB and/or VC++; sample code for performing routine ASP tasks; techniques to allow for reusable database scripts on the database system and on ASP pages; and how to obtain and register third-party components, thus saving massive amounts of time by reusing someone else's code; "Designing Active Server Pages" is for developers who have already mastered the basics of ASP application development and are ready to take the next logical step.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Introduction What Is Application Design? What's Wrong with ASP Design? Why Hasn't ASP Design Advanced? What Can Be Done to Improve ASP Design? Further Reading 2. Choosing a Server-Side Scripting Language The Popularity of VBScript Specifying the Scripting Language Creating ASP Pages with JScript Creating ASP Pages with PerlScript Creating ASP Pages with Python Further Reading 3. Exception Handling A Bit of Terminology Detecting When Exceptions Occur Responding to Exceptions Creating Custom HTTP Error Pages Further Reading 4. Regular Expressions, Classes, and Dynamic Evaluation and Execution Using the RegExp Object Using Object-Oriented Programming with VBScript Using Dynamic Evaluation and Execution Further Reading 5. Form Reuse The Importance of Code Reuse A Primer on Form Use Form Validation Creating Reusable Server-Side Form Validation Routines Developing Reusable Form Creation Routines The Practicality of Reuse Further Reading 6. Database Reuse Examining Database Usage The Building Blocks for Creating Reusable Administration Pages Creating Reusable Administration Pages Further Reading 7. Using Components COM-A Quick Overview Lesser-Known Microsoft COM Components Enhancing Microsoft's COM Components Building Components Further Reading 8. Enhancing Your Web Site with Third-Party Components Executing DOS and Windows Applications on the Web Server with ASPExec Obtaining Detailed Information About Your Users's Browsers Grabbing Information from Other Web Servers Encrypting Information Uploading Files from the Browser to the Web Server Why Reinvent the Wheel? Further Reading Index