Question

Dynamically creating variables from database column names

Asked by: Pugglewuggle

Hi,

I'm writing a little webapp where I need to be able to dynamically generate variables with the name of the column and then populate them with the data from the record that the cursor is on. So far I've got the part down as far as populating the data goes, I just need to know how to generate variables dynamically from the database columns without having to manually specify them. This is important because this particular database's tables can have columns added or removed at any time.

Here is my code so far related to populating the variabes after they're defined (mostly cleaning up data that is pulled on a per-record basis). This part is done manually so that only these variables are defined with this data:

' Set a variable to 0, which will be used to count how many times we loop through the recordset.
	x=0
' Loop through the recordset to retrieve our rows of data until there are no more records present.
	while not objRS.eof
' Set x<y where y = the number of articles you want to pull from the DB
' Starting at 0, when x reaches y it will exit the loop.
		if x<6 then
' The next 5 lines simply write out the remaining chunks of XML to complete the RSS file
' The for each loop replaces common punctuations with HTML codes for XML standards compliance
' "post_title" is the name of the database field that contains the title of the article.
' "link" is the name of the database field that contains the auto no. of the article.
' "desc" is the name of the database field that contains the introduction
			for each fld in objRS.fields
				call replace (fld,"&","&amp;")
				call replace (fld,"","&apos;")
				call replace (fld,"","&apos;")
				call replace (fld,"","&quot;")
				call replace (fld,"","&quot;")
			next
			
			response.write (objRS("post_title"))
			response.write (objRS("link"))
			response.write (objRS("descr"))
			response.write (objRS("author"))
			response.write (objRS("post_date"))
		end if
' Increment the counter by 1 each time the loop is executed
		x=x+1	
' Loop to next record
		objRS.movenext
' End while 
	wend

                                  
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Asked On
2008-09-18 at 12:19:40ID23743654
Tags

ASP VBscript

Topics

Active Server Pages (ASP)

,

MS SQL Server

,

VB Script

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: gregcmcsePosted on 2008-09-18 at 13:14:12ID: 22514912

I would use a dictionary object.

Example:
Set dFields = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
dFields.CompareMode = 1 ' Text mode -- ignore capitalization differences

dFields(strFieldName1) = objRS(strFieldName1)
dFields(strFieldName2) = objRS(strFieldName2)

For each strField in dFields.Keys
   response.write strField & " = " & dFields(strField)
Next ' strField

 

by: hieloPosted on 2008-09-18 at 13:29:05ID: 22515074

use a scripting.dictionary object -ex:

Dim objDictionary
'this create a dictionay object
Set objDictionary = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")

'not create the "variable name" and its value:
objDictionary "username","johnny"

It's not clear to me where/how you intend to use it, but my guess is:

Dim objDictionary
 
If not objRS.eof Then
	'this create a dictionay object
	Set objDictionary = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
 
	For i=0 To UBound(objRS.fields)
		objDictionary objRS.fields(i).name, ""
	Next
End If
 
 
' Set a variable to 0, which will be used to count how many times we loop through the recordset.
	x=0
' Loop through the recordset to retrieve our rows of data until there are no more records present.
	while not objRS.eof
' Set x<y where y = the number of articles you want to pull from the DB
' Starting at 0, when x reaches y it will exit the loop.
		if x<6 then
' The next 5 lines simply write out the remaining chunks of XML to complete the RSS file
' The for each loop replaces common punctuations with HTML codes for XML standards compliance
' "post_title" is the name of the database field that contains the title of the article.
' "link" is the name of the database field that contains the auto no. of the article.
' "desc" is the name of the database field that contains the introduction
			for each fld in objRS.fields
				call replace (fld,"&","&amp;")
				call replace (fld,".","&apos;")
				call replace (fld,".","&apos;")
				call replace (fld,".","&quot;")
				call replace (fld,".","&quot;")
			next
			For Each fldName in objDictionary.Keys
				response.write (objRS(fldName))
				'			response.write (objRS("post_title"))
				'			response.write (objRS("link"))
				'			response.write (objRS("descr"))
				'			response.write (objRS("author"))
				'			response.write (objRS("post_date"))
			Next
		end if
' Increment the counter by 1 each time the loop is executed
		x=x+1	
' Loop to next record
		objRS.movenext
' End while 
	wend
                                              
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