Reading web.config values in Classic ASP

9
votes

I have inherited a legacy classic asp site that I need to support, and am in the process of setting up a dev/debugging environment so I don't have to work on the production server.

The code is a bit of a mess, and there are literaly hundreds of connection strings dotted around the place in various .asp files. These all contain hard-coded references to the SQL server, etc.

I really don't want to have to replace all of these with my local dev environment SQL DB settings, so I was wondering if there was an easy way to get classic asp to read from a .net web.config file. This way I could change all of the hard-coded connection strings to read from this one place, and then I only need to define the server details in one place.

This would mean that I could then write code & debug locally, and all I would have to do is change a couple of values in the web.config before deployment.

Please provide clear examples in your answer, as I'm new to classic asp & I'm really not liking it at this stage. Can't wait to redevelop it all in .net ;)

Thanks

2
asp-classicweb-config

2 Answers

7
votes

Just use a server-side-include with all the app settings you need. It will be much easier (and faster) to implement than reading a web.config and give you the same flexibility.

config.asp

<%
Dim connectionString
connectionString = "your connectionstring here"
%>

Default.asp

<% Option Explicit %>
<!-- #include virtual="config.asp" -->
<%
'---
' ... use connectionString here
'---
%>

From what you tell you could improve the rest of your heritage using SSI in other places too.

26
votes

The usual place to do this in classic ASP is in an application variable in the global.asa file: 

SUB Application_OnStart
    application("connectionstring")= "[your connectionstring]"
END SUB

You can then use application("connectionstring") on every page without having to have an include on the page.