This tip comes from Chris K.

Those of you who have used ADO with ASP may already be familiar with including a file called adovbs.inc (or adovbs.asp if you are concerned about others reading include files) within each .asp file that makes use of ADO. (For those who are not familiar, adovbs.inc contains a whole host of VB Constant declaration statements, making it easier to use the hundreds of parameter options that are associated with ADO, and is available in Microsoft's SDK. You can learn more about it at: ADOVBS.inc... Use It!.)

Using the FileSystemObject with ASP can create the same problems - the parameters for each of the methods are in reality numeric, and (if you're anything like me) remembering the individual values when writing or reading code in an ASP can quickly lead to errors! (To learn more about the FileSystemObject be sure to read the FileSystemObject F.A.Q..)

There isn't (to my knowledge) a file available from Microsoft which sets up the constants which would make programming with the FileSystemObject easier and more consistent between programmer - probably because there are far less parameters to worry about using the FileSystemObject than there are with ADO. However, many programmers set their own global variables (or constants) to the various values, or simply use the values themselves.

But what if you're not familiar with these values? Well, here are a couple of options:

1. Check out the VBScript Language Reference from Microsoft (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/script56/html/vbscripttoc.asp) or the JScript Language Reference (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/script56/html/js56jslrfjscriptlanguagereference.asp) - these both contain a whole section on the FileSystemObject and its collections, methods, properties, etc.

2. Create a new text file, copy the following into it and then save it as fsovbs.inc (or fsovbs.asp). You can then 'include' it in each of your ASP pages that make use of the FileSystemObject and easily reference parameters through the constants you've already set up. (You could simply copy these lines into the adovbs.inc file and be done with it, but some would say it shouldn't really be called adovbs.inc then...!)

<% '--------------------------- ' FSO Constants for VBScript '--------------------------- CONST fsoWindowsFolder = 0 CONST fsoSystemFolder = 1 CONST fsoTemporaryFolder = 2 CONST fsoForReading = 1 CONST fsoForWriting = 2 CONST fsoForAppending = 8 CONST fsoTristateUseDefault = -2 CONST fsoTristateTrue = -1 CONST fsoTristateFalse = 0 %>

Happy FSO'ing!!

Happy Programming!

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