by Andrew Johnstone
In: General
10 Jul 2005I recently wrote a very quick CMS in ASP in two days and seeing as I haven’t touched ASP in a number of years and have forgotten alot of very minor things, such as language constructs. I have re-learnt some slightly odd methods to what i’ve been using recently with complex forms for example passing collections over from web forms. E.g.
Trying to pass over an array as I usually would use something along the lines of…
<input type="text" name="InputArray[id]" />
I spent most of that time trying to figure out how to loop through a Request.Form Collection to extract the name of collection submitted across. What I didn’t realise at the time was that you don’t need the brackets and the collection name is the parameter you submit across.
<input type="text" name="InputArray" />
Sample
Request.Form("AssociateDataKey").Count
For i=0 To Request.Form("AssociateDataKey")
Response.Write Request.Form("AssociateDataKey")(i)
Next
This is using a Natural Form Field Array, however you can suffix a number (Artificial Form Field Array) and loop through the collection to check whether it exists. This makes me question how you pass multi-dimensional arrays across with ASP?
<input type="text" name="InputArray[0][1]" />
<input type="text" name="InputArray[1][0]" />
Top Ten ASP Tips – Know the differences between Natural and Artificial form field arrays.
With regard to the simple CMS, it’s actually designed to be very flexible, supporting structured & unstructured data, as the information output will be for flash. The CMS adapts to the design of the database, with roughly seven queries you can extract all the information from the database that you could possibly require. As I mentioned the CMS analyses the datatypes displays HTML form fields according to them datatypes. Disables, enables forms based on the fieldname etc and updates joined tables. Whilst the only aspect of the CMS that really needs tweaking is the SQL SELECT fieldnames & the WHERE clause, I will most likely Map this back to XML as a form of MetaData and because the design directly relates to a physical sitemap, even in its present state the marketing guys can understand it.:D
This will run
www.vh1la-media.com
www.mtvla-media.com
I have been a developer for roughly 10 years and have worked with an extensive range of technologies. Whilst working for relatively small companies, I have worked with all aspects of the development life cycle, which has given me a broad and in-depth experience.