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The "Charles Explains..." column write charlescarroll@learnasp.com with feedback High Level Look at the built-in ASP objects to get a sense for essential ASP mechanics

ASP Built-In Objects by Charles Carroll

ASP has 5 built-in objects that make it appealing to build dynamic sites that will work in any browser. In addition to explaining the most crucial functions of the objects links  tutorials are included in () to help readers like myself who learn by doing.

The Response object - used to

1. send text to the browser. tutorial: /learn/res.asp
2. halt the page being served in mid stream if required. tutorial: /learn/res.asp.
3. transfer the page being served. tutorial: /learn/res2.asp
4. control whether a page is served to the browser in one or many transfers (buffering). tutorial: /learn/res2.asp
5. sends cookies to the browser. tutorial: /learn/cookies.asp

The Microsoft IIS4 documentation for the response object is at:
http://www.learnasp.com/iishelp/iis/htm/asp/intr5sj8.htm

The Request object

1. retrieve any Form values that a page submitted to this script:  tutorial: /learn/form.asp
2. retrieve any cookies from the browser.  tutorial: /learn/cookies.asp
3. retrieve some vital server and script information. tutorial: /learn/server.asp, /learn/server2.asp, /learn/serverall.asp.
4. retrieves any information the browser willingly transferred to the server

The Microsoft IIS4 documentation for the request object is at
http://www.learnasp.com/iishelp/iis/htm/asp/intr5ulw.htm

The Server object

1. create any COM objects (either supplied by Microsoft for FREE, bought by 3rd party vendors, or built using tools like C++, Visual Basic) the web server needs to do it's work
2. Set the timeout so that long tasks can be completed. Pages automatically timeout in 90 seconds if they don't complete their task to conserve server resources being consumed by runaway scripts, infinite loops and the like.
3. Encode text so that characters not allowed in a browser parameter can be used without incident
4. transforms text that are HTML tags into the correct codes to display properly.

The Microsoft IIS4 documentation for the request object is at:
http://www.learnasp.com/iishelp/iis/htm/asp/intr7838.htm

The Application object

1. Used to store information that many scripts need to access globally
2. Can be used to store objects that many scripts will access
3. If tasks that affect application variables might be affected adversely if task switching occurs offers a LOCK and UNLOCK capability to force such operations to not be interrupted.

The Microsoft IIS4 documentation for the application object is at:
http://www.learnasp.com/iishelp/iis/htm/asp/intr8zw4.htm

The Session object

1. Used to store data attached to a specific user/browser with minimal effort on the programmer's part.
2. Can be used to store data on the server that can only be accessed by scripts but never is stored on the client's cookies

The Microsoft IIS4 documentation for the session object is at:
http://www.learnasp.com/iishelp/iis/htm/asp/intr12d0.htm

The ObjectContext object (only in IIS4 or later, IIS3 did not have this)

1. Used to assist scripts in processing data in a transactional fashion so that any code block can specify a coordinated transaction succeed or fail with simple mechanisms
2. Can trigger events when code succeeds that will attempt to commit transactions. Can intercept unanticpated code failures and issue a transactional rollback.

The Microsoft IIS4 documentation for the objectcontext object is at:
http://www.learnasp.com/iishelp/iis/htm/asp/intr554k.htm

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