ASP Tip: Populating form select fields from database

In relation databases very often the different options for a field are stored in a different table. Populating the <OPTION> fields reading the values from a table can then be very helpful and simplify the maintenance when those fields change.

For that purpose I created several functions that help me doing it in different formats.

All the functions are saved in an include file (remember you should call it *.asp not *.inc). These are the functions contained:

Function ExpSelectID ( Table, DescField, RetID)
Function ExpSelectCondID ( Table, DescField, RetID, Cond, MsgError)
Function ExpSelect ( Table, DescField, RetID)
Function ExpSelectCond ( Table, DescField, RetID, Cond)


Table:	Name of the table
DescField:	Name of the field with the description
RetID:	Name of the value field
Cond:	SQL condition to be applied
MsgError:	Default value

Now you can see an example of the output for each function:

ExpSelectID:

<OPTION VALUE="RetID">RetID - Description

ExpSelectCondID:

<OPTION VALUE="RetID">RetID - Description
Only the records that match the condition Cond

ExpSelect:

<OPTION VALUE="RetID">Description

ExpSelectCond:

<OPTION VALUE="RetID">Description
Only the records that match the condition Cond

And finally here is the code for the include file in a text file.

Author: Carlos Baez

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