ASP.net and Web Surveys

DragonLEG · August 20th, 2012, 12:47 PM

I have created ASP.net webpages that will calculate vehicle emissions and other Greenhouse Gases based on survey results. I was able to create my pages after reading the Wrox Beginning ASP.net 4.0 and the Professional book as well. What I need to do now is figure out how to use ASP.net instead of classic ASP/ADO for the Survey aspect of the project. I need to be able to show running totals, and of course gather information using radio buttons, checkboxes, textareas, etc. I am missing the critical link on how to add data to a MS SQL database and validate before writing. Can someone direct me to some book or web site that can help me bridge this gap in my knowledge?

Imar · August 20th, 2012, 12:58 PM

Hi there,

You said you read Beginning ASP.NET 4. There's a whole chapter devoted to validation, and four of them are devoted to accessing a database. What part are you missing and what do you need more information on?

Imar

DragonLEG · August 20th, 2012, 02:52 PM

Maybe it's just changing the way I think of surveys from Classic ASP to ASP.net and I can't make the distinction yet. Most of the examples in the book have pre-existing data that is being displayed or Grid examples are shown to display data and update based on the ADD/EDIT/DELETE model. In classic ASP I would create my MS SQL database table with all of the fields (Which I would assume I would still have to do for ASP.net). I would then have an Update_Info.asp page that I would create a session variable to hold the identity ID for the respondent the 1st time thru and it would also post/write the data from all of my ASP pages using a nifty For...each variable in Form... loop updating the record set values with an Update.rs command. My surveys are usually complicated with new variables that calculated along the way from the survey entries that must also be added to the SQL DB. I just can't seem to wrap my head around how to think of the data being added/updated page by page with ASP.net

Imar · August 22nd, 2012, 05:10 AM

You could still do today what you did in classic ASP. You could, client side or server side, generate input controls and then at the server after a postback loop through the items in Request.Form, finding the ones you need and use their values.

Alternativelly, you can create controls programmatically during Init as explained here and here and here.

Finally, you could look into ASP.NET MVC that lets you work much closer to the form and its controls, giving you a much more direct way to interact with them.

Hope this helps,

Imar

September 18th, 2012, 12:28 AM

You need to understand that native-managed interoperation has its limitations. For example, the native ASP has no idea what is a managed "SqlConnection" object. Therefore, you can expect simply types such as string to work, but not such complex objects. Click data source binding for more information

September 20th, 2012, 01:43 AM

Votations is a free web based hosted survey software which offers all features needed to create and manage your online surveys in a quick and easy manner.
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