ASP 101

If you are reading this page then it is assumed that you are new to ASP and want to create your first dynamic ASP web page.

Before we can begin please make sure you have installed PWS or IIS on your system as you need one of these web servers to be able to view a page containing ASP (just opening the page in your web browser by double-clicking on the page will NOT work). If you are unsure on how to install PWS or IIS please read the tutorials on installing PWS or installing IIS.

Let's begin creating your first ASP page.

In this tutorial we are going to display the classic 'Hello World' text in a web page as well as the time on the web server.

As ASP is going to be displayed as part of a web page we first need to create an HTML web page, open up your favorite text editor and type the following.

<html>
<head>
<title>My First ASP Page</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="white" text="black">

Next we can begin writing some ASP. Any ASP needs to be placed in between the tags, <% ........ %>, to indicate server-side script. In this next part we will start the server side script tag and create a variable to hold the text 'Hello World'.

<%
'Dimension variables
Dim strMessage

Notice we haven't given the variable 'strMessage' a data type, this is because VBScript only has variant as a data type.

Now we have created a variable were going to give it the value 'Hello World'.

'Place the value Hello World into the variable strMessage
strMessage = "Hello World"

Once the variable has a value we can now display the contents of the variable in the HTML by using the ASP 'Response.Write' method to place the contents of the variable into the HTTP stream.

'Write the contents of the variable strMessage to the web page
Response.Write (strMessage)

Next we shall use the 'Response.Write' method to write a line break into the HTML to create a new line before displaying the server time.

'Write line break into the web page
Response.Write ("<br>")

Again using the 'Response.Write' method and the VBScript function 'Time()' we shall now display the server time on the HTML page and close the serer side script tag as we have finished using ASP in this part of the web page.

'Write the server time on the web page using the VBScript Time() function
Response.Write ("The time on the server is: " & Time())

'Close the server script
%>

Finally we need to finish the HTML web page by closing the body tag and the HTML tag.

</body>
</html>

Next, call the file, 'my_first_asp_page.asp' (don't forget the '.asp' extension) and save the file to a directory accessible through your web server (this will usually be, 'c:\inetpub\wwwroot', on IIS or PWS with a defualt install).

To display the page open your web browser and type 'http://my_computer/my_first_asp_page.asp', where 'my_computer' is replace this with the name of your computer.

And that's about it, you have now created your first dynamic ASP web page!

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