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Handling Multi-Select Input Boxes with ASP

The multi-select type of drop-down menu is useful if you want web site visitors to be able to select one or more items from a list.

Creating the web form

An example form is shown below:

To make such a web form, cut and paste the following HTML code into a page called multiselect.asp:

<P><B>Select one or more flavors from the list below</B></P>
<FORM NAME="multiselectform" METHOD="post" ACTION="multiselect.asp">
<SELECT NAME="flavor" MULTIPLE SIZE="7">
<OPTION VALUE="apricot">apricot</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="banana">banana</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="lime">lime</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="orange">orange</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="pineapple" >pineapple</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="strawberry">strawberry</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="watermelon">watermelon</OPTION>
</SELECT>
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Order flavor(s)" NAME="submitbutton">
</FORM>

Having done this, add some VBScript ASP code to the same page to decode the data sent to the page via POST when the form is submitted. The following ASP code snippets will enable the submitted data to be manipulated:

Extracting a list of requested flavors

Use the following code to display the flavors that were selected in the flavor
drop-down list.

<%
For a = 1 to Request.Form("flavor").Count
Response.Write("The flavor " & Request.Form("flavor")(a) & " was selected<BR>")
Next
%>

Finding out how many flavors were selected

It is also possible to find out how many flavors were selected:

<%
Response.Write(Request.Form("flavor").Count & " flavors were selected")
%>

Or by using a slightly more sophisticated version:

<%
If Request.Form("flavor").Count >= 1 then
Response.Write(Request.Form("flavor").Count & " flavors were selected")
Else
Response.Write("No flavors were selected")
End If
%>

Further Reading

• Sams Teach Yourself Web Development With ASP in 24 Hours. Start learning ASP with this introductory guide.
• Random Image Selector. A useful VBScript function to select a random image from a folder full of images.

Useful Development Tools

ASP Documentation Tool™

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SQL Documentation Tool

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VB Documentation Tool

The VB Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 projects. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced.

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Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion is a Windows application that extends the functionality of the Microsoft Windows Indexing Service so that it is able to index content from remote websites and also from ODBC databases. As such it can be used as a low cost alternative to Sharepoint Portal Search Services.

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The Website Utility

The Website Utility examines websites for errors and areas that need to be optimised for search engines by using a built in web crawling engine. Errors checked for include broken or moved hyperlinks, missing page titles and missing meta tags. It also generates HTML for use in creating website site maps (table of contents pages - like this one), and is able to create both client-side JavaScript Search Engines and server-side ASP Search Engines for a website.

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PHP Documentation Tool™

Automatically creates developer documentation for PHP web applications. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats.

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