Dynamic Includes in ASP

[sreemati]

Hi Everyone,

I have newly started as a ASP developer. I have been working on some change request and was blogged down with dynamic includes. Eventually I had managed to figure out the problem and find a solution. I am posting my findings for two purpose:

1) Help someone else who faces the same problem
2) Experts to point me to a better solution to the same porblem.

Problem: The are three different types of user to a system: Admin1, Admin2 and Admin3. All the three user are doing the same admin functionality - Add New user to the system but the admin add new user form should show different footers - footer1 for Admin1 and footer2 for admin2 and 3.

The admin type is determined by accounttype which is a session varible, so I tired the obvious solution

 
<%If (Session(“accounttype”)=1)% Then>
<!--#include file="footer1.asp" -->
<%Else%>
<!--#include file="footer1.asp" -->
<%End If %>
 
 

The page kept throwing the followign error -
Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01f4'
Variable is undefined: 'SQLAccess'
footer1.asp, line 74

I tired, the same code with Response.Write and it was working fine. A simple google pointed me to an article explaining about Server Side Include and hence for the same reason I was not able to use the aboce code.

The actual Solution to the problem was thought to be:

<% Dim selectInclude
selectInclude = Session("sccounttype")
 
Select Case selectInclude 
 
Case "99" %>
<!-- #include file="footer1.asp" -->
 
<%Case "2"%>
<!-- #include file="footer2.asp" --> 
 
<%Case "3"%>
<!-- #include file="footer2.asp" --> 
 
<%End Select%>
 

but again I got error -
Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0126'
Include file not found
createUser.asp, line 669
The include file 'footer2.asp' was not found.

I had no clue why it showed me this error as I was quite sure for the code to work but a little trying around - I figured the EXACT working code is:

<% Dim selectInclude
 
If Session("AccountType") = 1 Then 
selectInclude = 1
Else 
selectInclude = 2
End If
 
Select Case selectInclude 
 
Case "1" %>
<!-- #include file="footer1.asp" -->
 
<%Case "2"%>
<!-- #include file="footer2.asp" --> 
 
<%End Select%>
 
 

Questions from experts:
1) Though I have vague idea about why my second piece of code didn't work, I would request a clearer reasoning.
2) Is there any other better way of doing it?

Hope any looking for dynamic include finds it useful and I get more clearer about this concept.

Thanks and wishes
Sree

[jhardman]

Sree,

First code should work fine besides that the % is in the wrong place:

<%
If Session(“accounttype”)=1 Then %>
   <!--#include file="footer1.asp" -->
<%
Else %>
   <!--#include file="footer2.asp" -->
<%
End If %>
 

The error code you showed does not appear to be related to this problem.

One thing that I have seen that causes the logic to fail in these cases is when the variable is supposed to be an integer but is actually a numeric string. In other words you need to distinguish between

session("accounttype")=1

and

session("accounttype")="1"

Does this make sense?

Jared