In Part 1 we looked at how to read and interpret the Attributes property of the File object (one of the FileSystemObject objects). In this part we'll look at how to use the Attributes property to programmatically alter the attributes for a file on the Web server!

Recall from the table in Part 1 that there are certain attributes marked and read/write (while others are marked as read-only). As you may have guessed, those marked read/write are values that can be altered by a developer.

The easiest way to add or remove an attribute from a file is to simply add or subtract the appropriate value from the Attributes property. That is, if you want to make a read/write file read-only, all you have to do is add 1, the value of the Read-Only attribute, to the Attributes property. To toggle off an attribute, simply subtract its value from the Attributes property.

When using this method there is one huge caveat. If you are going to add some value to the Attributes property (in order to "turn on" a particular attribute), you must first make sure that it does not already possess that value! So, if you wanted to write a function that would make a specified file read-only, you could use the following code:

Sub MakeReadOnly(strFileName) 'Create an instance of the FileSystemObject Dim objFSO, objFile Set objFSO = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 'Use the GetFile method to get information on a file Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile(strFileName) 'Determine if the file is ALREADY Read-Only If objFile.Attributes AND 1 then 'We are already read-only, do nothing Else 'The file is NOT Read-Only, add 1 to the Attributes property objFile.Attributes = objFile.Attributes + 1 End If End Sub

That's it! Note that you must check to see if a file has a particular attribute before adding the attribute's value to the Attributes property! Similarly, if you wish to "turn off" an attribute for a given file, you would want to make sure that the file HAD that attribute BEFORE subtracting the attribute's value from the Attributes property. The below subroutine "un-hides" a file (if it is hidden):

Sub UnHide(strFileName) 'Create an instance of the FileSystemObject Dim objFSO, objFile Set objFSO = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 'Use the GetFile method to get information on a file Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile(strFileName) 'Determine if the file is ALREADY HIDDEN If objFile.Attributes AND 2 then 'The file is hidden, we need to "unhide" it objFile.Attributes = objFile.Attributes - 2 Else 'The file is NOT HIDDEN, therefore there's no need to unhide it End If End Sub

Well, that about wraps up this article. We examined the Attributes property of the File object and how to use it to read (and modify) a file's various attributes through code. For more information on the Attributes property, be sure to check out the technical docs!

Happy Programming!