Working with dates

At its most basic there's nothing like having the date and time on a web page to make it seem freshly served - Even if it would be just as freshly-served without such an embellishment.

But there are more serious requirements for date and time manipulation in active server pages (ASP) and VBScript isn't always at its most straightforward when you're dealing with date-time entities.

An active server page that returns a calendar for a given month provides a suitable model project to investigate VBScript's date abilities and how to weave them into HTML for the browser.

Once you get to grips with the date side of date-time the time comes fairly easily.

Introduction

Although date-time representations and manipulation is core to all kinds of web processing there is a definite - though probably undeserved - mystique about it all.

Learning about the date functions by using them is probably the most effective way of becoming comfortable with using them.

Basic calendar page

A basic calendar page can be used to demonstrate the coding techniques used in a more complex date project, a web-based movements sheet, maybe. The concepts are explored initially in ASPcalendar.asp.

This concept page is developed further in the active server page which renders a calendar, initiated by a HTML page which passes month and year parameters.

The code for the HTML/ASP page pair is analysed in calendar code. Also, from that page, there is a download of the HTML and ASP files for the project's pages.

Some VBScript date functions and constants are covered in the examples presented in the pages weekday and days in a month (or go straight to the easy way to return days in a month and miss the discussion!)