Improving performance of asp classic menu

I am sure there are still people out there that are still using classic asp even though asp.net has been out for several years and have gone through several versions.

The following are some tricks and tools I created to speed up asp classic.

Menu:
Getting options from the menu will dramatically slow down the web page. This is because each time the page redraws, the server has to access the database to access the database and retrieve the information. One way is to have a console program (at the time, I did it in Java to pull the data and save it to a text file). Once, you have it in the text file you can then retrieve it using "File System Object".

To make it easier to maintain, I add an entry in the global.asa to point to the file. As in:

Application("procList") = "c:\extfile\proc.txt"

Your asp script can then check to see if the setting is available:

  procFile = Application("procList")

    if (procFile = "") then
 response.write "Error Critical setup missing - step List"
 response.end
    end if

After that you can read that into an array, as shown below:

set fso = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
redim p4Lookup(sizeInc)
p4Size = sizeInc
p4Max = 0
if (fso.FileExists(procFile)) then
 set file = fso.OpenTextFile(procFile,1)
 while file.AtEndOfStream <> True
  tline = trim(file.readline())
  if (tline <> "") then
   p4Max = p4Max + 1
   if (p4Max > p4Size) then
    p4Size = p4Size + sizeInc
    redim preserve p4Lookup(p4Size)
   end if
   p4Lookup(p4Max) = tline
  end if
 wend
 file.close
 set fso = nothing
else
 response.write "Error - critical file missing - prodList4"
 response.end
end if

You can then create a function to draw the menu. You can then have create a subroutine and then place it between your html tags as follows:

<% ListArray p4Lookup, p4Max, "prod4", selprod4 %>

ListArray is the name of the subroutine, p4Lookup is the list read as shown above and p4Max is the number of items in the list. prod4 is the name of the menu item and selprod4 is the selected items.

To obtain the information, you will just do the following:

<%
selprod4 = Request.form("prod4")
%>

The list array subroutine is as follows:

'==================================================================
' Create a form (pulldown) list from an Array
'==================================================================

Sub ListArray(aList, aSize, SelName, SelRec)

'Parameters are as follows:
'    aList - array of options
'    aSize - number of items in array
'    SelName - name of form selection input
'    SelRec - Record selected

    DIM i

    Response.Write "<select name=" & SelName & ">"
    For i = 1 to aSize
        Response.Write "<option "
        if (aList(i) = SelRec) then
            Response.Write "selected "
        end if
        Response.write "value=""" & _
            aList(i) & """>"
        Response.Write aList(i) & "</option>"
    Next
    Response.Write "</select>"
End Sub

You can also have a script to allow multiple selection listbox as follows:

 '=====================================================
 ' Create Multiple Select list based on an array
 ' Parameters:
 ' aList           Array List to use
 ' aLim         Size of the array list
 ' selName         Name for the multi select list
 ' selectedList Array containing the list of values selected
 ' selListSize Size of the selectedList
 ' Osize         Size of the multiselect list
 '=====================================================
 sub mSelList(aList, aLim, selName, selectedlist, selListSize, Osize)
  DIM i
  response.write "<select name=" & selName & " size=" & Osize & " multiple>"
  for i = 1 to aLim
   response.write "<option"
   if inList(selectedlist, selListSize, aList(i)) then
    response.write " selected"
   end if
   response.write " value="""
   response.write aList(i) & """>" & aList(i) & "</option>"
  next
  response.write "</select>"
 end sub