The community is growing and ajaxed already helps a lot developers to keep their legacy ASP application still up to date. Some highlight of the release:

Read about the highlight of version 2.0

One cool thing on the new website is the publicly available source code of ajaxed.org. Thats a great resource to have a look into real world ajaxed development.

You are a student and love to get in touch with people from around the globe. On Tourmandu you can offer a tour in your hometown and tourists can get in touch with you. You show them ’round and they pay/tip you afterwards. Not a bad idea :) Great part time income …

As the project has been recently launched its a bit empty, but have a look at some existing tour to get an idea of what i am talking about..

• Tours in Australia
• Tours is Paris, France
• Tours in Spain
• Tours in the USA
• Guides for Famous sightseeing spots

println("something")
println(array("some", "more", "lines"))

Lets see how we solve the solution in a nice way and how we will be able to create a function which is simply called [] (which is common syntax for an array in other languages).

First we create the println function which prints out the line(s):

sub println(line)
  lines = arrayize(line)
  for each l in lines
    response.write(l)
  next
end sub

As you can see we use an arrayize function internally which will ensure a variable to be an array. This little function does the job and helps us to keep our code nice and simple:

function arrayize(value)
  if isArray(value) then
    arrayize = value
  elseif isEmpty(value) then
    arrayize = array()
  else
    arrayize = array(value)
  end if
end function

Its straightforward but very effective. This function ensures a variable to be an array. If its already an array then its just passed trhough, otherwise the value is take as the first field of the array. In case of an empty variable it returns an empty array.

Thats it! But we go a step further and create an alias for it which will make the usage even more simpler. Lets check this:

function [](value)
  [] = arrayize(value)
end function

Exactly, we use the squared brackets (which are normally used to escape reserved words). Back to our first function it looks like this now:

sub println(line)
  for each l in [](line)
  response.write(l)
  next
end sub

I dont know about you guys, but i am very excited about this way. It makes my code much clearer now. Btw: This will be part of the version 2.0 of ajaxed.

Technorati : array, asp, vbscript
Del.icio.us : array, asp, vbscript

Its very simple. Two text inputs and a button. Both text inputs have a name so we can talk to them. As you can already see we also hooked up a callback on the login button. Quite clear, because we'll handle the login on the server side. But before we do so we need to have a database with a user table including id, email and pwd column. (get a read about 'using a database with ajaxed' if you feel the need)

Now we write our server side callback which will handle the login action

Basically it checks if a user with the given email and password exists. The db.getScalar function returns the users ID or 0 if no such user exists. If the ID was found (line 8) we log the user in by setting a session variable to its ID. After that we return true to the javascript callback (line 10) which can notify the user about the success. If the ID was 0 we return false. As you can see we used str.sqlSafe for the email to prevent SQL injection and we hashed the password with an MD5 hash. This assumes that our passwords are hashed in the database (which is very common).

Last but not least we need the javascript callback function to notify the user about failure or success. On success we forward him/her to our default page (in this case just the root) and on failure we show a message.

That was it. In fact you will need a bit more for you application but this gives you an idea about how to solve such a common problem with ajaxed.

Download the full login.asp (tested with ajaxed 1.0)

You probably could extend your script ...

• .. that it checks if you are already logged in
• .. that it handles logout
• .. redirect the user to the originally requested url

For all who cannot wait go directly to the download and update to the new version.

Ok, so whats new in 1.0? I have aggregated all the comments and tried to implement all your requests. As I am developing with Ruby on Rails, I have added some rubyism to the whole library as well. Do I have to change my running system completely now? No! no need to panick. There are only two small things you need to prepare before upgrading to 1.0 (mentioned at the end of the article). Ok, let's move to the updates...

ajaxed console
Probably the most fancy update is the new ajaxed console which supports you while you develop your applications. its immediately available through /ajaxed/console/ on your server. You'll find there a lot of useful stuff like a test runner, current configuration, documentation creator, regular expression evaluator, etc. Check a demo of the console here

New ajaxed config
The ajaxed config (config.asp) has been moved to an own folder which is located in the webroot /ajaxedConfig/config.asp. Seperating the configuration from the library makes the update process easier now. You can overwrite the ajaxed library without any thoughts...

html, head and body tags integration (header & footer)
People used to have problems of integrating the html, head and body tags into their pages. This has been solved now and you can find a header.asp and footer.asp in your ajaxedConfig folder. Those files are automatically loaded within your pages. This change brought some additional features as well

• ajaxedPage.defaultStructure property lets you load your page with a default header and footer (provided by the library itself). This is useful if you quickly need a standard structure and don't really care about the details
• ajaxedPage.title gives you the possibility to assign a title to your page which may be used in the header
• ajaxedPage.plain property allows to render a page completely plain which means it renders only those things which are defined in the page itself. (no header and footer). You will need this for your XHR
• lib.exec lets you call any function only if it exists. This is used within the header to allow page specific head elements. Whenever you want anything to appear in your header just add a header() sub to your page and place the stuff there. e.g. especially javascripts, styles

Best thing is you take a look into the predefined header.asp in your config to see whats going on there. And don't forget it's up to you what you bung in there. You can add as many lib.exec calls as you want.

Environment support
ajaxed supports two environments now: LIVE (production) and DEV (development). The config variable AJAXED_ENVIRONMENT sets the current environment. This enhancement allows us ...

• creating conditions dependent on the environment. lib.env, lib.DEV and lib.LIVE are helpers to check which environment is running.
• setting ajaxedPage.onlyDev to true in order to prevent calling it on the LIVE environment. E.g. whole ajaxed console and tests are only available on DEV env yet.

(The default environment is always development)

Unit tests
TestFixture class lets you create unit tests for your own applications. It comes with a lot of different asserts (as commonly known in other unit testing frameworks) and is very quickly to set up. After you have written your tests you can run them directly from the ajaxed console. Tests for the library itself are located there as well. Here is an example of how you write a simple test (test file must start with test_):

Documentation generator (Documentor)
Some of you have long waited for the day to come :) Finally its here! Automatically create a documentation of your ASP code. The tool is called Documentor and can be found within your ajaxed console. It is also used for the generation of the actual ajaxed documentation which got a small face lift as well. Read How to document to know more about documenting your code (This manual can be found in your ajaxed console). Example of a method documentation:

Automatic version check
The ajaxed console checks automatically for a new version of ajaxed and reminds you if there is a new version available. Never miss an update.

MD5 hash class
We have a hash on board of the library now. Hash your passwords, etc. easily with:

Database methods
There are some new useful database methods which makes your code more readable and easier to debug.

Most of them support a condition parameter which can be either a number (its used automatically as ID) or a string (which is a condition for the WHERE clause).
Those are handy for common CRUD operations. If you need more sophisticated stuff you should still use db.getRecordset().

RSS reader and writer
If you ever want to generate an RSS feed in your application or read another one - it's no problem anymore. ajaxed has the right component inside. There is a full detailed article about this component here.

Template class
ajaxed 1.0 includes a template class called TextTemplate. Very useful if you send emails within your applications. Create an template for the content of your email and parse it using TextTemplate. The ajaxed console provides a simple management of templates. For more details about TextTemplate read the article Template component for classic ASP or check the ajaxed documentation. Simple example

Cache component
Caching data, rss feeds, etc. globally for all visitors can be achieved now with the Cache class. This class has been around for while as well and a details article is available here

Discussion group launched
I have created an own google asp ajaxed discussion group for better support and communication with all ajaxed users.

Minor changes/improvements

• init() must not exist necessarily anymore. If it exists it will be called. if not then not ;) Thanks to the new lib.exec() and lib.getFunction(). Check the reference for more details.
• str.matching checks a string against a given regular expression pattern. Is much more readable then creating the regex object over and over again.
• An error will be raised if there is no main() in your page. Makes it easier to know whats going on...
• lib.contains is a useful function which lets us check if a given value exists in a given data structure. Currently supported data structures are array and dictionary. Usage is easy: lib.contains(array("yes", "no"), "maybe")
• script.aculo.us is now part of the library as well. I decided to do this as it plays very nicely with prototype and both are being used in ruby on rails successfully for a long time.
• some more minor improvements and bug fixed which you bette look up in the changes.txt or directly in the SVN

That was it. Hope you enjoy working with the new version and I am looking forward for your feedback .. which already made the library what it is! Here are some things i am working on already...

• generic email class
• automatically notify admin about ANY errors
• plugin infrastructure
• asserts for request and response
• logging possibilities
• validator for business objects
• dropdown control and calendar control

If you UPGRADE from 0.3 then the only thing you need to do is to move your config.asp into the new /ajaxedConfig/ folder. Last but not least create a header.asp and footer.asp in that folder. Put all your html, head and body tags there. You can use the existing ones and adopt them to your needs. Last but not least change AJAXED_ENVIRONMENT to your needed environment.

Download ajaxed 1.0

If you want to live on the edge then grab the latest version from SVN.

ajaxed & asp JSON disussion

• working with prototype 1.6 now
• working with JSON utility class 1.4
• loading indicator stays now always on top of the screen. before it used to disappear if page scroll was not at the top
• loading indicator has no styles by default anymore.. you have to be define them by yourself in your css file. definine the css class 'ajaxLoadingIndicator' and choose your custom style
• more test have been added (also for recordsets)
• added AJAXED_DBCONNECTION to the config.asp => you can open the DB connection automatically now for each page by default
• renamed demo/index.asp to demo/default.asp because iis default installation has this already set

upgrading to the new version should be no problem if you did not change the source files of the previous version. The only thing you need to change is to add styles for the loading indicator. This helps us that everyone has its own indicator style ;)

enjoy it download ajaxed 0.3. Please post you comments about the new version within this topic.

After that the database is ready to use and there are two ways of using it:

1. Automatically through an AjaxedPage instance or
2. manually by accessing the Database class directly.

Using the database automatically with an instance of the AjaxedPage means that you tell the page that you need a connection to the database (for the time the page is running) and it will take care of it. This is achieved by setting the DBConnection property to true. After this you can access the database from within the init(), callback() and main() procedures. All methods from the Database class are available. The following example demonstrates how to use the configured database. It queries records from the database and displays the data in a div container.

Clicking the load button will grab all records from myTable and select the column called column. This is achieved with the getRecordset() method which accepts an SQL query and returns an ADODB.Recordset. After the records are fetched we let the page return them within the callback() state of the page. After that the whole recordset is accessible on client side within the JavaScript callback function loaded. The column names have been automatically "transfered" to JavaScript and are therefore accessible.

getRecordset() returns a locked recordset from the database. This means you are not allowed to do any modications to it. If you are in need of an "unlocked" recordset you should use getUnlockedRecordset(). This will open the recordset with a static cursor type and its loacation will be on the client. Now modifications can be done and properties like e.g. RecordCount are accessible also.

Sometimes you need to grab just one value from the database. Normally a count of records or even some calculation result. For this the ajaxed Library offers a method called getScalar() which always returns the value of the first column in the first row. It expects an alternative value which will be returned when the value cannot be identified (e.g. the query returned no records, etc). The following example shows the usage:

The variable numberProducts will always be assigned with an integer value. If there are no records available or the value cannot be parsed into the datatype of the alternative then the alternative value (in this case 0) is being passed through. The first line would count the records and result in a recordset with one row and one column which holds a number. Thus this case would pass the value from the recordset. The second line select all products and the first column is obviously a string column. In this case getScalar() will pass through the alternative value 0 because the name cannot be parsed into an integer. Last but not least the third line selects the ID of the products as the first column and therefore - if IDs are numeric values - the ID of the first product will be passed through.

Do you remember that there was another approach to access the database? Yeah the manual one. The manual approach might be useful e.g. if you are not using the AjaxedPage. Why? There might be several reasons. Maybe you are generating a file, etc. For this it is necessary to load the Database class, instantiate it and open the database connection manually. This would look like the following:

Last but not least I want to show you how to switch databases within one page. This scenario can be useful if you import/export data between two databases. Lets say we want to grab the data from a table of Database A and bung it into a table of Database B. The following example demonstrates this:

In order to switch to another database you need just to call the db.open() method with a connection string of your desired database. After that all methods of db are executed against the "new" database. The database connection is closed automatically at the end of page processing. Alternatively you could have created a new instance of Database and have both Databases opened.

• A database can be easily configured now and accessed with several convenient methods.
• A collection of useful string functions is now directly accessible (check VBScript String functions). Those functions are necessary for all kind of projects you do.
• Prototype 1.5.1.1 is being used now

Have a look at the new version and give me your feedback. I hope that I can find some time to come up with more tutorials.