[IMail Forum] Includes/ASP in Web Templates

[Michael B. Murdock]

Topic: How to mix ASP and Static Web Messaging Templates to produce dynamic content in Imail Web Messaging.   A while back I posted a query on how to get common HTML included in all the web messaging templates without having to cut and paste into each one. This has to be a common problem for anyone doing a serious makeover of the look-and-feel of the web interface. The problem for us was that we wanted to include a common header, sidebar, and footer on each page. These might change from time to time and the prospect of having to edit the 50 or so web templates each time was giving me a huge headache.   I tried using the mailwelc.txt file but it's size limitation and other quirkyness made this unworkable...   Additionally many of you have been discussing the desire to use ASP with Imail Web Messaging. While not the ideal solution (I would much prefer an Object API into the Imail engine directly) I have come up with a pretty good solution for doing dynamic includes and executing ASP within the web templates using JavaScript..   The solution is to include the following JavaScript in each web template..   <script LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="http://www.yourdomain.com/asp/loadjs.asp?jsfn=top.html"></script>   The loadjs.asp could be any asp you want to execute that puts out HTML.. The catch is that the ASP must send back properly formatted Javascript. So all you have to do is ..   Response.Write "document.writeln(""<h1>This is the HTML to send back</h1>"");"    Using this method your ASP can go do what ever it needs to and send back the results to the browser. It works great for including dynamic ads, rotating content or any other common code you want on every template page.   The loadjs.asp script I developed is designed to take a querystring "jsfn=file.html", load that html, format it into a proper javascript document.writeln command and send it back to the browser.   If anyone is interested I would be happy to post the jsfn.asp code for all to use...   Mike Murdock CIO FishingLife.com