Dear,

I do have an ASP page with vbscript code entirely executed on the IIS
server. The page contains a lot of data coming from the SQL Server.
I want to populate one of the <select> boxes on that page with data coming
from a file stored on the clients local hard drive. How do I achieve this?

Thanks in advance,
Regards,
Peter

=?Utf-8?B?UGV0ZXI=?= wrote on 12 okt 2007 in
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

You don't.

ASP runs ONLY on the server
and ONLY sends the computed html to the client.

Clientside coding, in javascript,
[or if IE only, also in clientside vbscript]
could read from the client's hard disk
ONLY if the security of the browser is compromized.

This however, besides being unwize,
is outside the scope of this ASP NG.

You could say, as many have done before you,
and you could and should have read in the archive,
that your application is so important, that it
is justfied that asp programmers should help you to
make clientside script, that also is dangerous to the ordinary user
if it were even possible, but I would not agree with you there.

So I would urge you not even to search for appropriate NG's,
but to abandon your quest.

Thanks Jan for the answer.
The goal was to build the drop down list with all 2800 Cities and their
postcode  in it so the user can select the city rather then typing it.
Problem is that it takes a huge time to download this content from the server
(SQL data) to the client. It would goes faster if this data was locally
stored since she would not change in the future. (unless the spilt of HBV
will cause Flemish cities become Brussels cities, according to the current
political crisis in Belgium)


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Hi Peter
Just a thought
Use a "Text" Input box for the PostCode to be typed in
On Lost focus
use XMLHTTP to get the City from your Internet server
that is Fast and the Web Page does not need to be repainted
- the City name appears where-ever you want it in your page.
Pete (Northolt UK)

Peter wrote:

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=?Utf-8?B?UGV0ZXI=?= wrote on 13 okt 2007 in
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

Show quoteHide quote[Please do not toppost on usenet]

[please do not invent another name for me]

I do not see why that would take a long time, only 2800 cities cum
postcode. A file of perhaps 100kB would do, methinks.
A nice jpeg is larger.
Do you dial in?

And it is not even necessary when using AJAX.

You would not have the user spit through a dropdown of 2800 lines?

Subidvided by the first two letters AJAX will only need to fetch between
5 to 20 records.

Which will never happen, they will go over to the Netherlands first. ;-)

Explanation of the "why" does not help, if something is imposseble.

However nothing is really impossible, if you think of it:

The browser cache can be used freely, though inconsistently because of
the individual settings of the users and browser types.

Try putting all the data in one .js file as an array of arrays:

a = [
    ['Brussel','10000'],
    ['Dendermonde','12345']
    ];

That file need only be loaded once a day or so.

This is the Internet, and it is all about freedom.

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No, this is Usenet.  Please do not top post, otherwise the message looks
like:

Now, does the above make any sense?  Got it?

jp2code wrote on 15 okt 2007 in microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

1
So freedom is not allowing me to say "please"?
So freedom is not about asking for adhering to Netiquette?

2
The internet is not about freedom.
Why would you think that?
The internet is just communication technology.
It is like saying, that the beach is all about freedom,
where the beach is just a nicely situated piece of sand.
Yes the internet can give freedom, just like a wire cutter.

So:

[Please do not toppost on usenet]

To boil the issue down you have a large amount of data that you want to
transfer to the client and store it locally so that its not retrieved every
time the page is hit by that client.

This is what the local browser cache is for.

Place the postcodes and cities in an XML file (lets call it cities.xml)

In IIS manager add a Cache-Control header to the file with the value
"max-age: 900"  A 15 minute life time may seem too conservative but its not
since all it really means is how often a round trip resulting in a 304
response is generated.

Now in javascript:-

// A good implementation would do error checking but this'll work
function getXML(url)
{

if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
    oXmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest()
else
    oXmlHttp = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0")

oXmlHttp.open "GET", url, false
oXmlHttp.send

return oXmlHttp.ResponseXML

}

If this is the only application you'd have for the XML I would be tempted to
make your XML look like this:-

<select id="cboCity" name="city">
    <option value="postcode">City Name</option>
    <option value="postcode">City Name</option>
    .
    .
    .
</select>

Now in HTML you would have:-

<body onload="body_onload()">

    <form id="frmName" name="name" ...>
        <span id="spnCity"></span>
        .
        .
        .
    </form>
</body>

Now the body_onload function would look like:-

function body_onload()
{
    var xmlCity = getXML("cities.xml")
    var spnCity = document.getElementById("spnCity")
    if (spnCity.ownerDocument.importNode)

spnCity.appendChild(spnCity.ownerDocument.importNode(xmlCity.documentElement
)
    else
        spnCity.innerHTML = xmlCity.xml
}

When the page has been hit once the XML will be cached locally.   Subsquent
requests will most likely pull the version from the cache.

The code may need refining for to work with a broader range of browsers.

After outlining all that, a Select box containing 2800 entries isn't a good
UI choice.  You could make the XML more heirarchical and be smarter about
populating a couple of Selects.

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