Configuration File

ASP Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Configuration File

This section describes the configuration file in ASP script to be used as an include file for the main ASP script page.

The easiest way to set up configuration files with ASP pages is to use include files. For hyBook, I used one include file, _config.inc, to maintain all configurable items:

<%
'  _config.inc 
'
'  Configuration file
'  hyBook version 2005.12.11
'  Copyright (c) 2005 by Dr. Herong Yang, http://www.herongyang.com/
  
'  Database connection
   Dim ogConn
   Set ogConn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

'  Number of submits per IP per day 
   Dim ngSubmitLimit
   ngSubmitLimit = 10

'  Default topic ID
   Dim ngDefaultTopicID
   ngDefaultTopicID = 14

'  Page title
   Dim sgPageTitle
   sgPageTitle = "hyBook Demo"

'  Debugging flag
   Dim bgDebug, ogDebug 
   bgDebug = False
   Set ogDebug = Nothing

Sub dbConnect
   ogConn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" & _
      Server.MapPath("/cgi-bin/hyBook.mdb")
      
   If bgDebug Then
      Set oFileSys = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
      Set ogDebug = oFileSys.OpenTextFile("\temp\hyBook.log", 8, True)
      ogDebug.WriteLine("Open data base connection.")
   End If
End Sub

Sub dbClose
   Set ogConn = Nothing

   If bgDebug Then
      ogDebug.WriteLine("Close data base connection.")
      ogDebug.Close
   End If
End Sub
%>

Note that:

All variables defined in _config.inc should be global variables so they become accessible in any functions in any ASP pages. A "Dim" statement is needed to make a variable global.
Database connection process should be a configuration item, because it is always different from one Web server to another.
I also included a debug flag in the configuration file to control printing debug information in a log file.