Database ASP Example Made Easy

<%
' -----------------------------------------------------------------
' Database ASP Example Made Easy
' By Paul Miller
' http://www.salientbeach.com/
'
' Lets say you have a database at in the folder "database" in your
' root FTP. In that folder you have a database(DB) named YourDatabase.mdb
' The first thing you have to do it make a connection to this dB. This is the
' HTML version of the code, a text version can be found here. An example
' DB for your code can be found here. You can always find more cool
' stuff at saleintbeach.
'
' Everything with a ' in front of it is a comment.
' -----------------------------------------------------------------

' -----------------------------------------------------------------
' 1. We have to define where the dB is and how we are going to talk
' to it. We do this by setting up a connection string.
' -----------------------------------------------------------------

' This is the default string needed to access the dB
sConnString = "DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ="

' This create a path, like "c:\webroot\serverfiles\", for whatever
' server you are on to the place on the server where all the web
' files are stored. This will tell exactly where the dB is stored.
sMapPath = Server.MapPath("\")

' This will concatenate the path we just created with where the
' location of the database in your web server files. This can
' point to any database in you web directory.
sMapPath = Mid(sMapPath, 1, InStrRev(sMapPath,"\")-1) & "\database\YourDatabase.mdb"

' This entire string is now concatenated to one sting for easy use.
SiteConnectionString = sConnString & sMapPath

' -----------------------------------------------------------------
' 2. We now have to set up a session with the connection string
' so that we can actually pull data down that we can use.
' -----------------------------------------------------------------

' This creates a server side object that we can use to ask for the data
set Recordset1 = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")

' This is where we use the path defined above to tell this object where
' the dB is actually located.
Recordset1.ActiveConnection = SiteConnectionString

' This is the SQL string used to "query" the data. This is extremely
' important for acquiring the correct data. Access can write this string
' for you in most simple cases, and then all you have to do is copy and
' paste the string in to this code. 'Articles' is a table name in the dB
Recordset1.Source = "SELECT * FROM Articles"

' This will now execute all the commands we set above and make a direct
' connection to the dB
Recordset1.Open()

' -----------------------------------------------------------------
' 3. We now have to create HTML and insert the database information
' using ASP code. All the dB information is encapsulated in the
' asp brackets.
' -----------------------------------------------------------------

<html>
<head>
<%

' There can be as many spaces as you want between the ASP open and
' close tags. These spaces and information will be manipulated by
' the server and discarded before it is sent out to the browser.

' This is how you call and display the data from the dB You have
' to use response.write to display the data and the data is
' Recordset1.Fields.Item("Title").Value. The value of what is b/w
' "" (in this case Title) is the column name in the dB

' The if NOT statement is there to say, if there is no data in the database
' based on that query, then do not display anything. If it does try to
' display something, it will give you an error.
%>

<% if NOT Recordset1.EOF or Recordset1.BOF then %>

<font face="Tahoma, Arial, MS Sans Serif">
Database Article:

<% response.write Recordset1.Fields.Item("Article_Copy").Value %>

<% end if %>

</font>
</body>
</html>
<%
' -----------------------------------------------------------------
' 3. Now we have to close the connection we made.
' -----------------------------------------------------------------

Recordset1.Close()