Web Development

outputing random records from database

10-Feb-02 23:07

mgk915 wrote:
Can anyone give me a brief definition of .net?

.NET is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

To Microsoft it is what they are betting their whole business on.

To developers, it is a new development framework.

To average Joe users it is a set of web services and hope that in the future everything can talk to everything and all your information is managed in one location in a meaningful way.

mgk915 wrote:
What software does .net require
to run on a server? (Win 2k?) -- what browsers does it
support?

Until MS release the Windows .NET OSs you need to download the .NET framework and install it on your server and any client machine which requires .NET capabilities.

.NET is not JUST about the web or browser interfaces. If you are a C++ developer creating client/server apps then .NET can help you without forcing you to move to browsers.

Just read those main links I have given you, it is a lot of info but it is worth knowing.

mgk915 wrote:
Company standard browser is
still Netscape 4.7

Quit your company and become a Budhist monk so that you can cleanse yourself... Big Grin | :-D

They should really change, even if it is just to Netscape 6.2.

regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

"The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

Sonork ID: 100.9903 Stormfront

9-Feb-02 13:11

have over 50 records in my database (Access). i want to only output 6 records, but randomly. another word, everytime I access that page, i want the page to genenrate 6 different record then the first time I look at it. thanks.

jlo-

here's the code i was orignially using.

<%
dim conn
dim rs
dim strsql
dim strconn

set conn = server.createobject("adodb.connection")
conn.open "movieslisting"
set rs=Server.CreateObject("adodb.Recordset")
strsql="select * from moviereview order by movietitle desc"
rs.open strsql, conn
If rs.eof then
response.write " < center >There are no records in the database"
response.write "< br > Please check back later"
response.end
Else

Do while not rs.eof and counter < 6
counter=counter+1
ID = rs("ID")
imgposterlarge = rs("imgposterlarge")
%>

< a href="moviereview.asp?ID=<%= ID %>"> < img src="/posters/<%= imgposterlarge %>" border=0> < b r >

<%
rs.MoveNext
loop
End If
%>

Re: outputing random records from database

Konstantin Vasserman9-Feb-02 14:08

Accessing a .ASP file but returning a .XML file

9-Feb-02 14:08

Open recordset with CursorLocation = adUseClient and Static CursorType.

Get RS.RecordCount

Call Randomize to initilize random-number generator.

Loop using For - Next.

Inside of the loop: generate random number between 0 and RecordCount-1 using Rnd function, use RS.Move myRandomNumber, 1 to position your recordset to your random record.

Paul Watson9-Feb-02 0:31

Re: Accessing a .ASP file but returning a .XML file

9-Feb-02 0:31

I would appreciate it if someone could please just point me in the direction of how to return a different file format to what the visitor accessed.

Ok, that is a bit confusing so let me explain.

I have an ASP file which combines, on the server side, an XML and XSL file to produce good old HTML and return it to the visitors browser.

Naturally the visitor might type http://www.paulwatson.com/default.asp and the browser then expects back an .ASP file stream.

This is all fine when I am using different XSL files to send back just HTML, but I am stuck on how when I want the XSL to transform an XML file into another XML vocab and return a .XML file to the browser when it is actually expecting .ASP

Do you get what I am trying to do? If so how do I change the output stream from this ASP file to "tell" the browser to expect an XML file and not an ASP file? Any pointers, classes, functions, ideas would be appreciated.

thanks

regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

"The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

Sonork ID: 100.9903 Stormfront

Konstantin Vasserman9-Feb-02 5:28

Re: Accessing a .ASP file but returning a .XML file

9-Feb-02 5:28

Paul,

Browser does not expect any particular type in response to its request. Instead server has to specify what type of document it is sending in the header of the response. You can send anything in response to http://www.paulwatson.com/default.asp. In order to change the type you have to do something like this:

Response.Clear
Response.ContentType = "MIME TYPE OF YOUR CHOICE"
Response.Write myData
Response.End

Mime Type can be "text/xml" or "image/gif" or whatever it is you are sending back to client.

You have to make sure that the above commands are the first Response commands in the page, otherwise it will not work. If you have something output to the client before those commands are executed - the default type will be "text/html". What I usually do is make sure that the first characters of the page are <% and the first command of the ASP is Response.Buffer = True.

Paul Watson10-Feb-02 2:39

Re: Accessing a .ASP file but returning a .XML file

10-Feb-02 2:39

Konstantin Vasserman wrote:
Browser does not expect any particular type in response to its request. Instead server has to specify what type of document it is sending in the header of the response. You can send anything in response to http://www.paulwatson.com/default.asp. In order to change the type you have to do something like this:

Response.ClearResponse.ContentType = "MIME TYPE OF YOUR CHOICE"Response.Write myDataResponse.End

Thank you very much Konstantin, that was exactly what I was looking for Big Grin | :-D

Funnily enough I thought the same way as you. But if the browser navigates to an .asp and you try and return an XML file it simply spits out the "text" version of the XML file, not a "real" version of the XML file as it was "expecting" HTML back, not XML. It is hard to explain but try using an XSL file to transform an XML doc into another XML doc on the server side and then return it to the browser via asp. It does not do what you would think.

But your code works brilliantly, thank you! Smile | :)

Thanks for the other reply, you actually got it right first time Smile | :)

regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

"The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

Sonork ID: 100.9903 Stormfront

Konstantin Vasserman9-Feb-02 6:14

asp.net controls won't appear

9-Feb-02 6:14

I've re-read your post and realized that you were perhaps asking something different than how to change type of the output. So I'll try to answer again... Smile | :)

You have to do all the XSL processing yourself on the server side by using transformations and then output the resulting HTML yourself:

Dim xmlDoc   ' as DOMDocument
Dim xslDoc   ' as DOMDocument
Dim strRslt     ' as String

' ...
' Create your documents here
' ...

XmlDoc.load "yourXMLDoc.xml"
XslDoc.load "yourTransform.xsl"

' To output to a text stream
strRslt = xmlDoc.transformNode(xslDoc)

Response.Write strRslt

Is this what you were asking? Confused | :confused:

8-Feb-02 20:49

when i open a asp.net application in the web browser the asp.net controls such as textboxes will not appear on the browser,any suggestions Dead | X|

Re: asp.net controls won't appear

Konstantin Vasserman9-Feb-02 5:17

Re: asp.net controls won't appear

9-Feb-02 5:17

Make sure you have runat="server" attributes on all the controls.

Peter Marino26-Feb-02 23:33

Peter Marino

26-Feb-02 23:33

are you saying that if I have "one" control without runat="server" this will cause the controls not to appear ( all of them ) ?

Re: asp.net controls won't appear

Konstantin Vasserman27-Feb-02 2:28

Code is not processed! Why?

27-Feb-02 2:28

No, I was not saying that. I was saying that you should check all of them, because it did happened to me when I forgot to include runat attribute on some controls and some controls did not show up.

8-Feb-02 18:33

Hi!
I have met such problem. I write "". Now I find out, that this frame contains not processed asp code. It is strangest, because I should receive a processed file from the server. Does somebody know why it is so?

James T. Johnson8-Feb-02 19:51

James T. Johnson

8-Feb-02 19:51

Inorder to obtained ASP processed code, the extention must be .asp. Here the extension of the file is .inc.

Using .inc for a asp include is a BAD idea for this very reason. Renaming the file to getsectioninfo.asp should fix your problems.

James

Sonork ID: 100.11138 - Hasaki
"Not be to confused with 'The VD Project'. Which would be a very bad pr0n flick. Big Grin | :-D

" - Michael P Butler Jan. 18, 2002

8-Feb-02 22:34

Thank you! It works...
But one more question. I don't understand you, is it "BAD idea" to use extention .inc always (why?) or only now?

Paul Watson9-Feb-02 0:19

9-Feb-02 0:19

Dymov Roman wrote:
But one more question. I don't understand you, is it "BAD idea" to use extention .inc always (why?) or only now?

Lets say you have an include file (in your case suffixed with .inc) which contains a database connection string, including a user name and password plus the ip address of the database server, lets call it dbconn.inc. You store it in a sub-folder called /inc. The full url is http://www.dymov.com/inc/dbconn.inc.

You then have an ASP file, dymov.asp which includes that include file and does some processing.

All well and nice but along comes Johnny Bebad. He is a hacker/cracker/smacker whatever. He wants access to your database. He could literally type in that URL, http://www.dymov.com/inc/dbconn.inc, and get the "source" of your so called ASP file.

The IIS server will not process the .inc file because it does not have an ASP extension, and so will serve it to Johnny Bebad as a straight text file that he can open and read. Johnny BeBad can now get at your database details and cause some serious down time.

If you had use ASP as the extension for dbconn.inc then all Johnny Bebad would have got is a blank page, no source code, no connection details. This is because IIS would have processed it.

I learnt this the hard way, though luckily it was just a friend who got ahold of my sites dbconn.inc. I hurridly changed all includes files to .ASPs.

I recommend you do the same Smile | :)

BTW it IS possible to get IIS to process .inc files but rather use the extension ASP than go about modifying IIS.

p.s. what is your sites URL? *evil grin* j/k

regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

"The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

Sonork ID: 100.9903 Stormfront