asked on

staying in VBScript after action= on select/option Onchange

I have an .asp page on which there is a form that has a select/option/value/Action element with the initial values of which are set from a Records/fields from a MSAccess Database.The user will peruse the contents of the select box eventually picking out a record at which point the "action" takes over and calls a function residing in that page's header. The problem is that function will be in JavaScript and therefore not allowing me access to that database – or to any other.

The question is how can I provide the same functionality as the above without ever leaving the ASP code?

Thanks!

Ross

Big Monty

ASP is not a language, but rather a technology. VBScript is primarily used as the server side language (although you can use javascript) while javascript and html are used client side to build the page. Server side code ALWAYS runs first, and once it does, it will not run again without making another call back to the server (for example, when a form is submitted).

if you want to make a call back to the server without having to reload the page, I recommend having a look at ajax, as it'll do just this:

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/ajax_intro.asp
http://api.jquery.com/jquery.ajax/

maybe if you can explain in more detail what you want, or if you have a link to the page that you can share, I can help guide you in a more specific manner.

Ross Greenberg

ASKER

look at http://www.nhtf.net/resreg.asp and play with the select thingie in the middle of the screen. Select something and an alert popup shows the line I want to execute against the MSAccess database on the server.

Big Monty

shows the line I want to execute against the MSAccess database on the server.

i'm afraid i don't follow. No popup comes up, although i see in your source code you call the MsgBox() function, which is not a valid javascript function, but rather a visual basic function.

depending on your level of experience developing dynamic web pages, you may want to consider EE Gigs

Ross Greenberg

ASKER

Whoops! I was trying something out. Try it again?

Big Monty

Ok now it's doing an alert statement that does a select based off of the dropdown.

What do you want to do now? Do you want to display data on the page based off of the dropdown? Do you want to save data to the database? If that's the case, start familiarizing yourself with ajax as we'll probably need to utilize it, otherwise explain in functional terms first, not technical.

Also please provide any source that is relevant.

Ross Greenberg

ASKER

Okay. What I want to accomplish is that when the user is scrolling through the choices offered in the select box is to read the MSAccess database to get the appropriate record and to dissect the relevant fields and to display them in the appropriate text fields (add1onscreen.value = recordset.add1.value, etc.) until the 'right' one is found/displayed.

I'm loath to learn Ajax just to solve this particular problem – it certainly does look powerful indeed and it does appear that *really* learning Ajax is going to take more than a couple of hours (any freebie AjaxToolkits you recommend to get started?)

(Does EE have a 'private message' capability?)

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Big Monty

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Big Monty

this is the solution that ended up fixing the issue as I did the work outside of EE for him.