How to go about from ASP.Net to Classic ASP for new project

Question

How to go from ASP.Net to Classic ASP; I have been assigned to new project which is in Classic ASP and I have never worked on Classic ASP but have exposure to .NET

Answer 1

You need to get a new job immediately. :) Unless you're converting a small asp application to asp.net? In which case, this may help. And even then, I'd still consider a new job.

I would take half a day to research why ASP.NET is an improvement on classic asp. Also point out your own skills, which are ASP.NET, and therefore why an ASP.NET project should be faster to develop.

Present your research (even if it's just in an email) to your employer. If they still want to use classic asp for new projects take your ASP.NET skills elsewhere.

I have seen good people sent down legacy roads, the results are never good for them.

Answer 2

Hello Anwar,

Why in the world your employer wants to do that?? You need to ask him this question. That is like saying we are abandoning all the cars and let's go back to those carts which are pulled by horses.

Answer 3

First off, I do agree with Joe R and Azamsharp's sentiments. The benefits of using something more up-to-date are innumerable. But I also know that's completely unhelpful, since you're just trying to get the job done that's been assigned to you.

Two tips: I find http://www.devguru.com to be an excellent site for reference. It has detailed information on both asp and vbscript, and it's well-formatted and easy to use.

The other tip is to spend the time (it won't take much) to ensure you can step through your classic asp pages using your current version of Visual Studio. In IIS config --> Home Directory tab --> Configuration --> Debugging --> enable asp server-side debugging. This will allow you to insert a breakpoint in your asp script (just a statement saying "stop") that will give you a prompt to invoke the VS debugger. You will also need to configure your local web site to run under your network identity instead of the default anonymous user.

Doing this considerably lessens the pain of working in classic asp, when you have no other choice.

Answer 4

Find the answer to the following questions:

• Are you starting from scratch (unlikely?) or is it a matter of smaller modifications?

• Are you stuck with coding in VBScript or can you choose JScript?

• Will there be lots of backend/business logic?

• Will there be many forms with DB storage requirements?

Answer 5

A language is a tool, not a lifestyle. Ignore the fanboy comments. A job is a job, make your suggestions if applicable but if you are a programmer, then program. If you were a mechanic looking for work and some one wanted to hire you working on bmw's and gave you the opportunity to learn, but you are used to mercedes, would you turn it down? asp classic is easy to learn and you can master the whole language, unlike *.net. Just read through a vbscript reference guide and then learn the asp collections. Not much to them but they will get the job done and that is what matters to the client.

Answer 6

Classic ASP is very simple scripting language, which is the good and bad of it. There is no event handling, as far as I know. When a classic ASP page loads, it executes the code in a straightforward line-by-line style. You can have functions in VBScript to help with your code/logic. But there are no pageloads or server-side (postback) onclick methods/functions.

You will have html forms that when submitted with go to an ASP page. This page will execute the code to process the form data and perform the necessary tasks.

Classic ASP is very straightforward and simple, which is the charm of it to me. What you see is what you get.

A great resource I use for finding different types of info on VBScript is at the W3Schools website:

http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/