DT211/3 Internet Application Development

Active Server Pages& IIS Web server

Introduction

• Purpose: to provide some practical experience of using IIS web server and basic ASP pages

• Active Server Pages Developed by Microsoft

• Active Server Pages is a ‘programming model’ (as is CGI) –

• Similar to JSP, script is interspersed with HTML

• Pages must have a file extension of .asp – otherwise, server won’t know to process as an ASP page

Web Servers

• Microsoft has two web servers that are usually used to run ASP

•IIS (Internet Information Server – Windows NT/XP Pro/2000•PWS (Personal Web server) – up to Windows 98

• IIS is free with Windows 2000/XP Pro, part of the Windows NT 4 option pack.

• PWS is a scaled down version of IIS for Personal Computers.

• ASP pages can be run on other servers, provided the server has the ASP engine. Sun Microsystems have produced a product called Chili!Soft ASP which enables ASP to be used on other web servers including, Apache, I-Planet, Zeus, Red Hat Secure Server, etc, using various operating systems including, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc.

Set up a web site in IIS

• Open administrator tools in Control panel – and open the Internet Server Manager

• Shows directory structure for IIS

• Default web site is the HTTP site. Expand the default web site (shown overleaf) and create a virtual directory in the Webpub directory - this will hold the documents for your web site. (A virtual directory is just an alias for a real directory that exists). This virtual directory will become part of the web address to access any documents contained in it

e.g. http://localhost/Webpub/examples/blahblah.html

Set the access permissions

Set up a web site in IIS• Access permission = security level choices for the

virtual directory

• Read = users can read and download files in the directory Run Scripts = allows scripts in the directory to be run

• Execute = allows applications in the directory (e.g. CGI )to be run

• Write = allows a Web page to accept user input (e.g. credit card input

• Browse = allows users to navigate from one web doc to another via hyperlinks

• http://www.webwizguide.com/asp/tutorials/installing_iis_winXP_pro.asp

Loading a document from IIS

• To load a HTML doc using IIS:

First, ensure HTML doc has been placed in the virtual directory

Then type the web address for your html doc into the browser. This will be:

e.g http://localhost/webpub/alias/index.html

• To load ASP documents – do exactly as above, and remember to access using “.asp”

e.g http://localhost/webpub/alias/somepage. asp

What ever you called the directory

ASP• When a browser requests an ASP file, IIS passes the request

to the ASP engine (ASP.dll). The ASP engine reads the ASP file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file. Finally, the ASP file is returned to the browser as plain HTML

• ASP pages are usually written using VBScript, but can use other languages e.g. Microsoft’s Jscript

• VBScript is the default language (VBScript is a scaled down version of Visual Basic)

• Scripting code CAN be made to run on the client OR the server. e.g. can have an ASP page that contains Javascript validation to run on client, and VBScript for running on server (e.g. database access)

Uses of ASP

Can be used similar to JSP for:

•Dynamically edit, change or add any content of a Web page

•Respond to user queries or data submitted from HTML forms

•Access any data or databases and return the results to a browser

•Customize a Web page to make it more useful for individual users

•Provides security since your ASP code can not be viewed from the browser

•Since ASP files are returned as plain HTML, they can be viewed in any browser

Differences between VBScript and Visual Basic

•VBScript explicitly supports one data type only , the Variant

•VBScript is an interpreted language

•VBSCript cannot directly use the Windows API

•There are few syntactical different in the use of some internal functions

How to start your IIS account

•The accounts are on the student webserver and can be access to through FrontPages\\erin.student.comp.dit.ie\dt211-3<student name>Using <student/user name> and window password

•Your web site in IIS can be published to through Front-page by openingHttp://www.student.comp.dit.ie/dt211-3<student name>