Category: ASP / VBScript Dev Tools

Here is a handy snippet for those rare occasions when you bother to error check.

If Err.Number <> 0 Then
subject = "Error creating early alert"
email_message = "There was the following error while creating an early alert record: " & Err.Number & " : " & Err.Description
sendEmail adminEmail, email_message, from_email, subject
End If

Can deliver a helpful error message such as:

There was the following error while creating a record: -2147217900 : Unclosed quotation mark after the character string ‘Failed a quiz/test’.

This is a handy snipped to create an array from a list of items separated by a comma, like you would get submitted from a checkbox group. Its as easy as using the “Split” function as so:

MyString = "ItemOne, ItemTwo, ItemThree"
MyArray= Split(MyString , ",")

You could then access the elements using the standard array language MyArray(x)

For x = LBound(MyArray) to UBound(MyArray)
    Response.Write MyArray(x)
Next

Here is the technique to get the ID number of the last record inserted (right as you insert it)

Dim db,rcs,new_identity

‘Create a database connection
Set db = Server.CreateObject(“adodb.connection”)
db.Open “DSN=MyDSN”

‘Execute the INSERT statement and the SELECT @@IDENTITY
Set rcs = db.execute(“insert into tablename (fields,..) ” & _
“values (values,…);” & _
“select @@identity”).nextrecordset

‘Retrieve the @@IDENTITY value
new_identity = rcs(0)

According to the Microsoft Docs, The InStr(string1, string2)  function returns the position of the first occurrence of one string within another.

We can use this to find a string within another one. For example. I wish to see if an email address is from the Skagit.edu domain. I want to see if the address is firstname.lastname@skagit.edu so I can use the first and last name in a greeting.

string1=”@skagit.edu”
string2=”firstname.lastname@skagit.edu”

stringcount = InStr(string1, string2)

If stringcount>0 Then
response.write(“We have a skagit.edu domain address”)
Else
response.write(“This is not a skagit.edu email address”)
End If

I need a server side check for basic email address syntax. I will use a regular expression to match the pattern of xxxxx@yyyyy.zzz

 Function GetEmailValidator() 
      Set GetEmailValidator = New RegExp 
      GetEmailValidator.Pattern = "^((?:[A-Z0-9_%+-]+.?)+)@((?:[A-Z0-9-]+.)+[A-Z]{2,4})$" 
      GetEmailValidator.IgnoreCase = True 
End Function 

This is a great function, but how to use it? Well, you test it like so:

Dim EmailValidator : Set EmailValidator = GetEmailValidator()

If EmailValidator.Test(to_email) = False Then ..... execute code for when an invalid email is found

Here is a sweet way to perform a function based on the date.

If DateDiff(“n”,Now(),”9/15/13 08:00:00″) <= 0 Then
openorclosed = “open”  ‘open form to public access.
Else
openorclosed = “closed”  ‘close form to public access.
End If

Lets break down the use of the DateDiff function. From the msdn docs I see DateDiff(interval, date1, date2 [,firstdayofweek[, firstweekofyear]])

Interval lets us decide how precise we want this function to be. If we want, we can call it as broad as a  year or down to the second we want to define.

For example, since its December and all the kids are freaking out, lets make a Christmas countdown timer to show how many days until Christmas.

today = Now()
christmas = “12/25/2013”
interval = “d” ‘ we use d since we want to count the days.
numberofdays = DateDiff(interval, today, christmas)
Response.Write(“<p>There are only ” &  numberofdays & ” days until Christmas.<p>”)

To really automate the open and closing of a form, I need to see if the date is in the range of open and closed dates provided by administration.

opendate = “July 1, 2015″
closedate=”April 20, 2015”

If CDate(NOW()) > opendate and CDate(NOW()) < closedate Then
response.write(“<p>the form should be open</p>”)
Else
response.write(“<p>the form should be closed</p>”)
End If

How about if I want to format a date to look good for the user. In some cases we would want the date to look formal: Lets take Christmas:

christmas_date=”12/25/2015 24:00:00″

FormatDateTime(open_date, 1) // this would output “Wednesday, December 25th, 2015”

FormatDateTime(open_date, 3) // This would output “12:00 AM”

Response.write(date & “<hr>”)
Response.Write(MonthName(Month(Date)) & “<hr />”)
Response.Write(Day(Date) & “<hr>”)

Response.Write(Month(“8/10/2008”))

Response.Write(Month(“Aug 10, 2008”))

Response.Write(Month(“10 Aug, 2008”))

Response.Write(Month(“10 August, 2008”))

Response.Write(Month(“August 10, 2008”))

Response.Write(“<br />”)

So Here we go, need to capitalize the first letter of a string. thats easy.

myString = “donald”

If myString <> “” Then ‘ this is important becuase if the string is empty it will create an error.
myString = ucase(left(myString , 1)) + right(myString, len(myString )-1)
End If

Response.Write(myString)

Donald