Processing options

Processing option defines the way ASPC will process the file configured in the project. You can select/change it by selecting a file in the file list and choosing the "File options" from the "Edit" menu or shortcut (right mouse) menu for the item. A dialog appears:

It shows the file path and a list of the available options. You can select one of them in order to instruct ASPC what to do with this particular file. When a file is added ASPC IDE automatically selects an option according to the file extension. This selection is not always exactly what you want and you will need to change it using this dialog.

Also you can temporarily exclude the file from the build  by checking the "exclude from build" checkbox. This can be useful when searching for an error and some of the code makes the work more difficult.

Core options

ASPtoVB

The file will be compiled to VB class(es). Compiler expects an ASP file (with <% %> tags). Two or more files are generated as result:
- ASP loader file in the "compiled" directory or its subdirectory as configured in the project settings.
- VB class module for the page in the VB Project's directory as configured in the project settings.
- Zero or more VB class modules for every VBScript class found in the page in its includes.

After compilation you are using the loader ASP page instead of the original page. The VB class module(s) are used only by the Microsoft Visual Basic when building the DLL.

VBStoVB

This option is very similar to the previous but it tells ASPC the file is in plain script format - text file containing VBScript code only without ASP tags. This is default for the WSH files and VBScript files for many custom scripting hosts.

ASPtoASPPlain

Instructs ASPC to not generate VB files. This will convert the original ASP file to an ASP file with only one pair <% %> tags. In other words all the output will be made using Response.Write and include files will be merged with in the result. This can be useful to improve performance without creating DLL, by just lowering the complexity of the ASP page. Of course lower complexity means "easy to process" and not more human readable.

This can be a good idea if writing a complicated ASP page and you want to use many <%- %> tags to make it easy to program. Placing hundreds of such tags will make the page considerably slower. The same is true about the includes - if they are too much. But you can keep writing the page using the style convenient for you and process it before placing it on the server.

Miscellaneous options

ASPtoVBS

This option is mostly for internal usage and for future purposes. It is like the ASPtoASPPlain option but will not place any <% %> tags in the beginning and end of page thus it will not run on the ASP server/engine directly. But placing one <% in the beginning and one %> tag in the end will make itthe same as the result of the ASPtoPlain processing.

It can be useful if you want to use for example our ScriptManager2 component. You can feed it with the ASP objects and then put in it this script and run it. This can be useful mostly in non-WEB applications which want to generate some HTML content for example. We will try to publish a separate example soon.

Copy

As it sounds this is a simple copy operation. The file is copied to the compiled folder in the right location. For example this can be a MDB data base file or image which must exist in the site structure. The options is only for additional convenience for those developers who want to pack an ASPC project with all the applciation files - including the files which do not need any processing. Use it when packing a project in an archive. For example when sending it to a friend.

None

No processing. This is a dummy option. It is included mostly to cover the needs of the IDE. When the file extension is not known for the IDE it will use this option by default.

SSItoHTML

Process file from "Server side include" form to plain HTML. If the original file uses some <!-- #include ... -->  tags - this option will convert it to plain HTML file by replacing the include tags with the include files pointed.

No script is expected in these files. If any script exist it will remain unchanged.

This option can be very useful when building a documentation in a set of HTML files. For example for the Microsoft HTML Help compiler.

What to expect in future versions?

We know - sometimes developers need to create a snapshot of their site. Thus one of the planned options is a local ASP processing and generating a set of static HTML files. This is like the creation of the site mirror but without need to place it on a server.

It is not planned to support another languages as source. In other words ASP Complier will continue to support only VBScript. But we plan output to another languages - including some of the .NET languages and probably C++ at a later time.