ASP Pages and Databases

[chris124]

Hello

I'm a beginner to asp and databases and wish to learn how to create one for a website, I have at present setup an access database (although there isn't anything in it yet), hosted it on my windows server, and it's now active, what I need to do now is to create a form that will call specific data from it and display that information in an asp page.

I know not everyone likes DreamweaverMX 2004 for creating asp pages but for now until I get a hang of it I wish to use it, I am creating my pages using the ASP VBScript template from Dreamweaver, I have created a database connection within it (I believe it works).

I need a quick lesson on how to create the form, retrieve the specific data and publish it on an asp webpage, I have purposely left the database empty for this lesson, another reason for leaving this database empty is because I have access to a ASP.Net Enterprice Manager through the ISP, there are many fields on this that I don't understand so if anyone knows how to fully use this it would be appreciated.

Thanks
Chris124

[Northernladuk]

I had the same problem and i learnt by using tutorials around the web and there are loads of great ones.

One of the best ones I found to start of with is this one...

http://www.webwizguide.info/asp/tuto...a_database.asp

and it goes on to help you create a simple guestbook. Its a great example as it has a form to submit to the database and then how to show the data back.

Also from there just us google. There are thousands of tutorials out there. Just type in something like ASP Access Tutorial or something.

[chris124]

Thanks Northernladuk

A very useful reply

[rustynails]

Hi Chris124,
I bought the book; "Build Your Own ASP.NET Website Using C# & VB.NET" from Sitepoint Books and have found it to be extremely helpful, with workthrough examples and code archive to download to get you started.

Not a plug for sitepoint directly, but it really is a good book, credit where credit is due, I have already built some of my own pages and an intranet, top points to Sitepoint Books.
There is sample chapters you can download for free to get a feel for it.

Good luck and hapy coding !!

[chris124]

Thanks Rustynails, I'll check it out

[Bullschmidt]

And here are a few more good ASP sites:
o ASP101 Samples - http://www.asp101.com/samples
o W3Schools ASP Tutorial - http://www.w3schools.com/asp
o Microsoft VBScript Language Reference - http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/...bscripttoc.htm

[chris124]

Thanks Bullschmidt, I'll take a look

[dhtmlgod]

I would second the recommendation of SitePoints .NET book. I was asked to review it (my comment even made it to the product page for it!) and it's really a great book

But thats for ASP.NET, and your trying to do ASP. If you would like me to create a simple ASP page to insert and retrieve data, let me know and I'll knock it up. You'll need to let me know what columns you have in your database tho and what they do, etc. Also, I haven't written any ASP in about 3years, so it might take me a lil while, lol

[chris124]

Thanks dhtmlgod your help would be appreciated.

I think your now if you just want to create a small database and some asp pages of your choice that would be fine, I'll then take a look at it and sort of back engineer it, so to speak.

What I would like though is a form on an asp page that asks the user for certain information, say for instance, if they were picking a car or computer of their choice, then the information they require would populate a new asp page.

I've seen some asp pages that are built from a database, when a user goes to, say a ford car page, the database would populate it, that same asp page could be use to display BMW cars if you user asked for that page. I believe this type of use of a database largely reduces the entire website size.

[gRoberts]

I still use Dreamweaver today after 6 years of doing it. But instead of using it's built in functions, I am hand coding all the asp and using Dreamweaver to do the HTML etc. ( Boring work ).

It's still a good piece of software.

Gav

[md_irfan_amu]

hi chriss u can see
www.w3schools.com for asp and data bases its easy for beginners

[chris124]

Thanks md_irfan_amu

I'll check it out, Bullschmidt has already recommended w3schools, must be good then.

gRoberts

Creating asp pages is difficult but I see the advantages to using Dreamweaver, the fact that these pages and the Database can be edited live is a great help.

[gRoberts]

When I first started web design, dreamweaver was the best, it done everything when it worked. Then I started looking at extensions, but they were proving to be expensive, so I stopped buying them and started looking at the coding they created.

After a while I started hand coding, and then it took over me of what you can actually do with asp. Now I hand code everything because debugging is easier then using dreamweaver's built in coding.

Simple things can be done, with maximum effect. I would suggest w3schools.com they have helped me alot! and I mean totally.

Gav

[dhtmlgod]

I've knocked up a very simple user sign up process to show inserting and displaying database data. I'll upload it when I get home from work

[chris124]

Thanks dhtmlgod, I'll look forward to it