Category: Classic ASP

Classic ASP 3.0 Code Tips and Hints

Classic ASP Design Mistakes: OWASP & The Open Web Application Security Project

Who the hell still codes in old school ASP?

I still see classic ASP used for rapid prototyping and I work for a large org that had lots of old code all over the place so it is not uncommon to come across it as a professional software developer.

I get to work on and support a lot of stuff in my day job. C# MVC applications, Data Warehouses, Saleforce.com, Cloud Stuff, Legacy Code and how to tie all these things together.

ASP may be an old technology but I would suggest there a lot of reasons to use it including teaching computing programming and web development, prototyping and inexpensive solutions for businesses.

You can run it on your Windows 7 and later PCs and runs on every new Microsoft server I’ve encountered and it won’t cost your company a dime, it is already built-in.

Some others Devs scoff at using Classic ASP but it really does have quite a lot to offer and it does all of it with just 7 objects. The simplicity is its power, you can still do a lot of “bread and butter” web functionality including AJAX calls with classic ASP.

I’m not here to debate whether developing in Classic ASP is either good or bad but I’ll say in my defense, you have to pick a tech stack and stick to it long-term to get traction on a big project like my side gig, https://www.finditclassifieds.com which I’ve been working on in my spare time for 21 years now.

I really felt the need to pick a technology or two or three and just get really good at those and make a bet on which technologies would be in production the longest so I would not be slowed by having to learn new languages, frameworks, databases and operating systems all the time.

So far I’ve guessed right.  Over the years I’ve added PHP, Python and some others but form more of back end processing stuff.  ASP is always sitting on top with web services under the hood written in any language.

If you’re still coding in ASP or you would like to learn.

Check out the tutorials on the W3Schools website.

https://www.w3schools.com/Asp/

Also make sure you’re coding your Classic ASP as securely as possible.

The OWASP site was very helpful with their documentation on ASP coding errors to watch out for and brought some potential security issues to my attention and am better for it.

Make sure to learn about the Open Web Application Security Project and check out their references on the most common ASP designs that affect security.

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Classic_ASP_Design_Mistakes

For Loops for Beginners – ASP, C#, PHP, JavaScript & Python Examples

A “For Loop” executes a block of code a specific number of times or while a specified condition is true.

PHP For Loop

for (init; condition; increment)
  {
  code to be executed;
  }

php fOR lOOP PARAMETERS

  • init: Mostly used to set a counter (but can be any code to be executed once at the beginning of the loop)
  • condition: Evaluated for each loop iteration. If it evaluates to TRUE, the loop continues. If it evaluates to FALSE, the loop ends.
  • increment: Mostly used to increment a counter (but can be any code to be executed at the end of the iteration)

Note: The init and increment parameters above can be empty or have multiple expressions (separated by commas). Example The example below defines a loop that starts with i=1. The loop will continue to run as long as the variable i is less than, or equal to 5. The variable i will increase by 1 each time the loop runs:

PHP For Loop Example Code

<?php
for ($i=1; $i<=5; $i++)
  {
  echo("The number is " . $i . "<br>");
  }
?>

Classic ASP For Loop Example Code

<%
For i = 1 to 5
 Response.Write("The number is " & i & "<br>")
Next
%>

JavaScript For Loop Example

<%
For i = 1 to 5
 Response.Write("The number is " & i & "<br>")
Next
%>

C# For Loop Example

for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) 
      {
        Console.WriteLine(i);
      }

Python For Loop Example

states = ["Alaska", "Alabama", "Arkansas"]
for x in states:
  print(x) 
  if x == "Alabama":
    break