A Simple guestbook in ASP

				Creating a guestbook in asp is actually quite easy...First off let me explain how to install this sample.....copy the asp files into the same directory and with front page drag the database into the explorer window of said html editor (i do it this way as it automatically sets the proper permissions on the fpdb directory for adding entries).
A brief explanation of the code:
there isn't much to the sign guestbook page other than it returns the current date/time when the page was accessed for a field in the database. the real work occurs in the guestadd.asp...i did this in two parts to a.) make it easier to read and b.) to not have to explain the use of hidden form fields to determine whether or not you should execute portions of code. mostly a though.
for those with little/no database/sql experience let me kind of explain the methods here...You first open a connection to a database...as you can tell it gives information on what type of database to expect and it's location in the web site (don't worry, if you uploaded like i said or have a friend that can set the permissions on that folder, you are golden...the db won't be downloaded). The connection object is used to open up your database for you (at least in this example, it's full uses are too numerous to mention in this article). the second part in dealing with the database comes with the adodb.recordset object...this is the object that actually interacts with your database...in the guestadd it will insert data, in the guestbook.asp page it will retrieve data...in the guestadd.asp i first open the recordset by calling the table name in the database i want...in this case, guests...i then call the addnew method and give it the array of fields i want to add, then the values i collected from the form (if you haven't read up on asp's intrinsic objects, i SERIOUSLY reccomend you do that before anything) and called an update method. it's as easy as that! then you close each object (in asp you don't really have to, the runtime will do that for you, but it's considered very good practice and considerate to resources) and dereferenced it (a fancy way of saying i don't need the memory for those objects anymore. again, not necessary, but good practice). If all goes well (and this should) the page will redirect you to the view guests page where you should see your entry listed. the listing page is very similar to the add page with one major exception. I did use sql on this one to specifically get fields from the database (i didn't want the gbID field and didn't feel like using an if statement to not print it). to paraphrase it's meaning, it's saying "i want the data for these fields in this table"....the recordset will retrieve it and put it in a handy dandy collection (a list of key/value pairs) for you to work with....from there we set up a simple loop that checks to see if the recordset is at the end, and if not to display a table with the fields i've asked for and again closes and dereferences the objects i've created to free up system resources....that's pretty much it. Again this is a simple guestbook, it has no field validation, or error handling involved with inputted user data, so there is room for improvement in that respect but this is the easiest way i've ever seen to implement a guestbook and it does incorporate principles that can be used in other dynamic html situations that involve data access. Hope this helps out! Cheers!