The response object is useful, feature rich, and subtle. We are going to focus on it's most fundamental capabilities – the 20% you will use 80% of the time. The capabilities we think are vital include:
Does this error message plague you?
Response object error 'ASP 0156 : 80004005' Header Error whatever.asp, line # The HTTP headers are already written to the client browser. Any HTTP header modifications must be made before writing page content.
The Simple Fix….
<%response.buffer=true%>
needs to be added as the very first line to any pages made by any HTML document that mixes redirects/headers and content. And buffering is a great idea anyway from overall server speed viewpoint see http://www.learnasp.com/advice/whybuffer.asp).
One drawback to <%response.buffer=true%> is if a page takes a while to compose (i.e. a couple thousand records from a database) people see nothing until the page is completely rendered. If a page takes 20 seconds to render, the browser user sees nothing until the 20th second! In that situation to avoid appearing as the page is dead, a well-placed <%response.flush%> tell server to send HEADER + whatever text so far so lets readers see the portions of the page being built. Increasing percieved speed of database displays is explained at http://www.learnasp.com/learn/speedtables.asp by judicous use of flushing buffer.
NT4 <%buffer=false%> by default which hurts overall server speed (http://www.learnasp.com/advice/whybuffer.asp). Win 2000 <%buffer=true%> by default. A clever administrator can change NT4 registry so buffer=true for all scripts and will see major server performance improvements (see http://www.learnasp.com/learn/speedserver.asp for other ones).
response.write server.htmlencode("<B>Hyperion</b> by <I>Dan Simmons</i> is a great novel") response.write server.URLencode("Joe Smith & Hilda = a team")
The response object is often used with a variety of syntax variations which we will detail here.
<html><head> <title>res4.asp</title> </head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <% ' The response object can be used to write text a variety of ways ' depending on what style you personally prefer ' Various permutations of writing to the browser response.write "<form>" response.write "Hello, Joe<br>" who="Joe" response.write "Hello, " & who & "<br>" %> Hello, <%=who%><br> Which Book? <input type="TEXT" name="book" value="The Stand"><br> <% response.write "Which Book? <input type=""TEXT"" name=""book"" value=""The Stand""><br>" %> <% response.write "Which Book? <input type='TEXT' name='book' value='The Stand'><br>" %> <% quote=chr(34) response.write "Which Book? <input type=" & quote & "TEXT" & quote & " name=" & quote & "book" & quote & " value=" & quote & "The Stand" & quote & "><br>" %> <%bookname="The Stand"%> Which Book? <input type="TEXT" name="book" value="<%=bookname%>"><br> <% response.write "Which Book? <input type=""TEXT"" name=""book"" value=""" & bookname & """><br>" %> </form> </body></html>