Active Server Pages 3 Developer's Guide [Paperback]

Alberto Manuel Ricart (Author), Stephen Asbury (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764547151 | ISBN-13: 978-0764547157 | Publication Date: August 14, 2000

This insider's guide is packed with professional techniques and real-world examples for creating interactive e-commerce Web sites. You'll get expert advice on developing server-side applications using both JavaScript and VBScript. You'll also learn practical shortcuts to help you create and manage state-of-the-art Web sites, methods to simplify and speed up development, and innovative ways to take advantage of ASP.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Active Server^™ Pages 3 Developer's Guide This insider's guide is packed with professional techniques and real-world examples for creating interactive e-commerce enabled Web sites. You won't have to learn a new language because this unique reference offers expert advice on developing server-side applications using both JavaScript and VBScript. These pages are packed with practical shortcuts to help you create and manage state-of-the-art Web sites, from building online catalogs to controlling access and integrating databases. With this guide, you'll discover how to simplify and speed up development — and find innovative ways to take advantage of ASP.

• Explore the newest features of ASP 3
• Create a new Web project and access the pages
• Develop server-side applications using JavaScript and VBScript
• Use ADO for database access and manipulation
• Understand and implement Web applications, including Active X components
• Utilize scriptless ASP processing
• Employ advanced ASP 3 debugging and security options
• Work with request, response, application, server, and session objects
• Understand application persistence via HTTP cookies
• Set up and manage a bulletin board system

Bonus CD-ROM Includes

• Source code to complete the examples in the book
• Trial software, shareware, and freeware, including:

SA-FileUp ASP-db Pro BrowserHawk 2000 Enterprise Edition Caprock Dictionary System Requirements PC running Windows 95 or later, Windows NT 4 or later. See the What's on the CD-ROM Appendix for further requirements and details. www.idgbooks.com

About the Author

Alberto Manuel Ricart has developed many programming courses in topics such as Web development and Web application programming. He is the author of several books including The Apache Server Survival Guide and E-speak: The Definitive Guide for Developers. Stephen Asbury is an architect and a member of the steering committee for BayWeb, a consulting firm. He coauthored CGI How-To, Perl 5 How-To, Programming with JFC, and Developing Java Enterprise Applications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 522 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (August 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764547151
• ISBN-13: 978-0764547157
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,764,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hate VB Like I Do?, September 9, 2001

By 

Adam Pasztory "adampasz" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Active Server Pages 3 Developer's Guide (Paperback)

This is THE book to buy if you want to learn to write ASPs in Javascript. I have done much searching, and have found no other useful books on this subject. Zero. Sure there are some books that claim to cover Javascript on the back cover, but usually their code is limited to a few examples.

If you're planning to use VB, then there are probably better books out there for you. But if you want to learn to write ASPs in JavaScript, this book is extremely helpful. Though ASP objects are the same no matter what scripting language you use, there are subtle differences in the way you manipulate them. If you try to start coding ASPs in JavaScript from a text that uses Visual Basic, you will undoubtably suffer through a lot of frustrating trial and error.

This book starts with the basics, and works up to some complex examples like a BBS and an online catalog. The writing style is clear and to the point. The CD is no frills, but at least you get all the code. Needless to say, you should already be familiar with JavaScript before you tackle writing ASPs in JavaScript.

A final caveat: There are a number of typos in this book, including a nasty one on page 153 that mixes up the constants for reading and writing files. If not for this, I probably would have given it 5 stars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful javascript guide to asp for developers, May 22, 2001

By 

Henry Rabinowitz (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Active Server Pages 3 Developer's Guide (Paperback)

I found this book to be a well written guide addressed to an experienced developer who wants to learn ASP using Javascript (or jscript as microsoft calls it). The examples are of the right length and number.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, April 1, 2001

By 

Nicolas Alberti - See all my reviews

This review is from: Active Server Pages 3 Developer's Guide (Paperback)

I don't understand why some of the above reviews on this book came out so poor. This book is one of the very few to show large and useful examples of ASP written in JavaScript (JScript). I found this book straight forward, and with direct application to what I, as a developer, needed to know.

To me this book spoke clearly. Not coming from a Microsoft server-side background I needed to get up to speed with ASP. I already knew JavaScript from client-side programming, but most of my server-side programming was done in Perl. I didn't really want to learn a new programming language, and this book took that idea and put it to work. I was able to leverage my knowledge and quickly become proficient at ASP. Most if not all of the features available to ASP are shown using JavaScript, and most things have associated code examples with them.

True, this book is geared for programmers wanting to write web applications. If you are not a programmer you WILL need to get additional references - the authors don't really waste anytime to teach you HTML, or server side scripts or how to program - but that is not what the book is about and the book's preface tells you this. The authors have also included two appendices that will get most programmers up to speed on JavaScript and VBScript.

In terms of organization the book spends the first couple of chapters motivating why ASP is a great development platform and what sets it aside from other technologies out there. From there you get immersed into the basic 5 objects (Request, Response, Application, Session and Server) that provide most of the functionality that you'll need to develop your apps. In my case this was enough to give me a working knowledge of ASP for many projects. Continuing sections show you how to incorporate ActiveX components into your projects, access the file system and access databases. Other chapters are devoted to web issues like application persistence, error handling and debugging. Lastly this book also sports chapters on some less frequently used (but powerful features) server-side includes (SSI) and access control (authentication). Three of chapters are dedicated to `real world' type examples. One of them even shows you the code as most developers would initially write it, but then refactors it so that most of the code can be reused easily. This chapter provided great insight to me on how to take a web app and make it really easy to maintain.

I have looked for additional books on this topic, but none provides the breadth or depth for this one. GET IT.