ASP Objects

Part:   1  2  3 

(Continued from previous part...)

Output:

Tests on the request object:
Total bytes = 0
QueryString.Count = 0
Form.Count = 0
ServerVariables.Count = 49
ALL_HTTP = HTTP_ACCEPT:*/* HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE:en-us HTTP_CONNECTION:...
ALL_RAW = Accept: */* Accept-Language: en-us Connection: Keep-Alive ...
APPL_MD_PATH = /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT
APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH = c:\inetpub\wwwroot\
AUTH_PASSWORD = 
AUTH_TYPE = 
AUTH_USER = 
CERT_COOKIE = 
CERT_FLAGS = 
CERT_ISSUER = 
CERT_KEYSIZE = 
CERT_SECRETKEYSIZE = 
CERT_SERIALNUMBER = 
CERT_SERVER_ISSUER = 
CERT_SERVER_SUBJECT = 
CERT_SUBJECT = 
CONTENT_LENGTH = 0
CONTENT_TYPE = 
GATEWAY_INTERFACE = CGI/1.1
HTTPS = off
HTTPS_KEYSIZE = 
HTTPS_SECRETKEYSIZE = 
HTTPS_SERVER_ISSUER = 
HTTPS_SERVER_SUBJECT = 
INSTANCE_ID = 1
INSTANCE_META_PATH = /LM/W3SVC/1
LOCAL_ADDR = 127.0.0.1
LOGON_USER = 
PATH_INFO = /request_test.asp
PATH_TRANSLATED = c:\inetpub\wwwroot\request_test.asp
QUERY_STRING = 
REMOTE_ADDR = 127.0.0.1
REMOTE_HOST = 127.0.0.1
REMOTE_USER = 
REQUEST_METHOD = GET
SCRIPT_NAME = /request_test.asp
SERVER_NAME = localhost
SERVER_PORT = 80
SERVER_PORT_SECURE = 0
SERVER_PROTOCOL = HTTP/1.1
SERVER_SOFTWARE = Microsoft-IIS/5.0
URL = /request_test.asp
HTTP_ACCEPT = */*
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE = en-us
HTTP_CONNECTION = Keep-Alive
HTTP_HOST = localhost
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSNIA; Windows NT...
HTTP_COOKIE = ASPSESSIONIDQQGQQVFQ=DFPLLCDACFFBCIBMCKALNNMK
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING = gzip, deflate
Cookies.Count = 0
ClientCertificate.Count = 0

A couple of interesting things to note here:

• The collection object can be interated by the "for each k in c" statement, where "k" is the key of each in the collection.
• Since "c.Item(k)" is the default method, it can be written as "c(k)".
• The ServerVariables object contains a lot of information, including remote host IP address, URL, translated path name, etc.

If you request this ASP page with the following url:

http://localhost/request_test.asp?Name=Bill+Smith&Country=Canada

You will see the following changes in the output:

Tests on the request object:
QueryString.Count = 2
Name = Bill Smith
Country = Canada
ServerVariables.Count = 49
...
QUERY_STRING = Name=Bill+Smith&Country=Canada

What happens here is:

• When you request a Web page with a URL contains a "?", everything after "?" in the URL will be received by the server as the query string.
• The query string will be store in the server variable called "QUERY_STRING". It will also be split into pairs of names and values and stored in "QueryString" collection.
• "&" is used in the query string as delimiters.
• Special characters in the query string need to be encoded. For example, " " is encoded as "+". I believe ASP offers both URL encoding and decoding methods.

The "response" Object

The "response" object is also a rich object. It contains all the information the server wants to send to the browser, and methods to manage that information:

• Cookies: A collections of cookie objects the server wants to send to the browser.
• Buffer: A boolean property indicating whether to buffer the page until the contents are completed.
• Charset: A property representing the character set name in HTTP response header.
• ContentType: A property representing the content type name in the HTTP reponse header.
• Expires: A property representing the period of time before the page cached on a proxy server expires.
• IsClientConnected: A boolean property indicating whether the browser has disconnected from the server.
• Status: A property representing the status in the HTTP response header.
• AddHeader name, value: A method to set or change the value of a variable in the HTTP response header.
• AppendToLog(string): A method to append the specified string to the log file of the Web server.
• BinaryWrite(data): A method to send binary data to the browser.
• Clear(): A method to clear any buffered HTML output.
• End(): A method to stop add data to the HTML output from both script statements and static HTML data.
• Flush(): A method to sends buffered HTML output immediately to the browser.
• Redirect(url): A method to redirect the browser to another URL.
• Write(string): A method to write the specified string to the HTML output.

(Continued on next part...)

Part:   1  2  3