The FlexGrid ActiveX control is a powerful control to display and
manipulate data from a database in Internet Explorer. This sample uses
Visual InterDev's DataCommand Design-time control to access the datasource.
The client-side script uses a call to a subroutine to actually build the
HTML source code that will add rows and columns to the FlexGrid control
before the control is displayed by Internet Explorer.
To use the Flexgrid ActiveX control in a new .asp script follow these
steps:
- Create a new .asp file for your project in Visual InterDev.
- Replace the default source code with the ASP script below.
- Right mouse click on the "DesignerControl" METADATA tag at the top of
the script. Select a data connection and build the necessary SQL statement
with which to populate the recordset that will be produced at runtime.
- Save the file and preview in browser.
Additional explanatory comments follow the sample script.
<%@ LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" %>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" Content="Microsoft Visual InterDev 1.0">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<TITLE>Document Title</TITLE>
<!--METADATA TYPE="DesignerControl" startspan
<OBJECT ID="objRst" WIDTH=383 HEIGHT=24
CLASSID="CLSID:7FAEED80-9D58-11CF-8F68-00AA006D27C2">
<PARAM NAME="_Version" VALUE="65536">
<PARAM NAME="_Version" VALUE="65536">
<PARAM NAME="_ExtentX" VALUE="10125">
<PARAM NAME="_ExtentY" VALUE="635">
<PARAM NAME="_StockProps" VALUE="0">
<PARAM NAME="DataConnection" VALUE="MagisterPubs">
<PARAM NAME="CommandText" VALUE="SELECT authors.* FROM authors">
<PARAM NAME="CursorType" VALUE="3">
</OBJECT>
-->
<%
Set MagisterPubs = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
MagisterPubs.ConnectionTimeout =
Session("MagisterPubs_ConnectionTimeout")
MagisterPubs.CommandTimeout = Session("MagisterPubs_CommandTimeout")
MagisterPubs.Open Session("MagisterPubs_ConnectionString"),
Session("MagisterPubs_RuntimeUserName"),
Session("MagisterPubs_RuntimePassword")
Set cmdTemp = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
Set objRst = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
cmdTemp.CommandText = "SELECT authors.* FROM authors"
cmdTemp.CommandType = 1
Set cmdTemp.ActiveConnection = MagisterPubs
objRst.Open cmdTemp, , 3, 1
%>
<!--METADATA TYPE="DesignerControl" endspan-->
<%
Sub FillCells
Dim ctRow, ctCol, vbCrLF
vbCrLf= Chr(13) & Chr(10)
ctCol=0
' Note: added 1 to rows so that we can print field headings
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Rows=" & objRst.RecordCount+1 & vbCrLf
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Cols=" & objRst.Fields.Count & vbCrLf
' Print field headings
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Row=0" & vbCrLf
For Each fld in objRst.Fields
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Col=" & ctCol & vbCrLf
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Text=" & Chr(34) & Trim(fld.Name) &
Chr(34) & vbCrLf
ctCol=ctCol+1
Next
' Print data
ctRow=1
Do Until objRst.eof
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Row=" & ctRow & vbCrLf
ctCol=0
For Each fld in objRst.Fields
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Col=" & ctCol & vbCrLf
Response.Write "MSFlexGrid1.Text=" & Chr(34) & Trim(fld) &
Chr(34) & vbCrLf
ctCol=ctCol+1
Next
objRst.MoveNext
ctRow=ctRow+1
Loop
End Sub
%>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript">
<!--
Sub window_onLoad()
<%FillCells%>
End Sub
-->
</SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<OBJECT ID="MSFlexGrid1" WIDTH=668 HEIGHT=156
CLASSID="CLSID:6262D3A0-531B-11CF-91F6-C2863C385E30">
<PARAM NAME="_ExtentX" VALUE="17674">
<PARAM NAME="_ExtentY" VALUE="4128">
<PARAM NAME="_Version" VALUE="65541">
<PARAM NAME="Rows" VALUE="2">
<PARAM NAME="Cols" VALUE="1">
<PARAM NAME="FixedRows" VALUE="1">
<PARAM NAME="FixedCols" VALUE="0">
<PARAM NAME="AllowUserResizing" VALUE="1">
</OBJECT>
</BODY>
</HTML>
This script has four main parts:
- The Design-time conrol that creates a recordset on the server.
- ADO source code that runs on the server and writes HTML and VBScript to
be used by the client-side script to populate the ActiveX control.
- The client-side script that calls the "FillCells" subroutine during the
window_onload event. This subroutine is the one that actually contains the
VBScript that populates the FlexGrid control. The subroutine is called
during the windows on_load event to ensure that Internet Explorer has
already created an instance of the FlexGrid control.
- The actual FlexGrid ActiveX control. If you right-mouse click this
OBJECT tag the key thing to remember when configuring the FlexGrid control
is that the number of rows and columns must exceed the number of Fixed Rows
and columns by at least one.
Several of these components interact with each other. For example, the
recordset uses a cursor of type 3; viz., a static cursor. Choose your own
cursor wisely, but choose one that supports the RecordCount property
because the ADO script needs to use the number of records returned by the
data source to specify how many rows the FlexGrid control needs to display
at runtime.
However, when you also want to print the field names, you need to add one
to the recordcount property, otherwise you will raise a runtime error when
the client-side script tries to write beyond the size of the buffer it uses
to store row values.
This same ADO script is also dependent on the values specified in the
FlexGrid control. If this script does not appear in your Internet Explorer
with the first row being fixed and displaying the field names from the
recordset, then you need to ensure that the FlexGrid control is set with 1
Fixed Row and 0 Fixed Cols. As noted above at item 4, if Fixed Rows are set
to 1 then Rows must be at least 2.