ASP: CDate

Tweet

CDate is an ASP function that converts a valid date and time string to a Date Type value and returns it.

Because of the above we need to use another ASP function in order to be sure to convert a valid date. The function's IsDate.

In the following short post, we are going to see how to use both functions and create a short script that converts a date.

ASP: how to create effective date fields for forms

Tweet

Today we are going to create a date field for a form. The goal is to make it beautiful to see, easy to use and with validation. We are going to use ASP and just a touch of CSS.
The form element will look like:

Day 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Month 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Year 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

In the example above, I have inserted all the options manually, but as I will show you, we are going to make the values of the three option controls automatic. - Note that if you are reading this post via your RSS reader you might not see the above example in the way it was meant.

Ok. Let's start with the code.

ASP: is this a date? The IsDate function

Tweet

Form validation is probably the most wanted feature by web developers. Every web programmer, at least once in a lifetime, has dealt with the issue: the user fills in the form and submit wrong data. Without validation, the best thing could happen is that an error is thrown. The worst case? The wrong data is submitted to your database... and believe me, most of the time you don't want that.
While complete JavaScript form validation solutions are available everywhere, today I would like to point out that VBScript has a very simple function that can help us in checking dates at least.

The function

The function I am talking about is IsDate. I've already talked about the function in a post about SQL Server queries and date functions. The VBScript function works in a similar way.
Basically it returns a Boolean value (true/false) stating if an expression is a date or can be converted to a date. The function uses the local settings in the evaluation process, so be careful in using it: for example, English months in words are not the same in Italian.

SQL Server: basic functions (part 7) - IsNull, IsNumeric, IsDate

Tweet

This is the seventh part of the Sql Server basic functions series. When I started it, I couldn't think of going that far. Honestly, I thought I would write about some functions, however, after a while, I started to understand that leaving other functions out would be unfair. That's why I would like to write about IsNull, IsNumeric and IsDate... and maybe some other functions in the near future.