Arg, me mateys!

djork

This is the most creative way to make a dropdown list from a database query EVER. arg1 is a result set, arg2 is the name of the field from which to get the value, and arg3 is a very special formatted string containing a list of fields from which to retrieve information to be displayed in the option tags. I had to investigate when I first encountered code that looked like this:

<%
Set dropdown9 = New DropClass
dropdown9.makeList DBData1.data, "nName_ID", "v-cLast_Name-e & *, * & v-cFirst_Name-e & * * & v-cMiddle_Name-e"
%>

Now here's the actual method that handles the above code.

<%
function makeList(arg1,arg2,arg3)
	arg3 = Replace(arg3,"v-","arg1(*")
	arg3 = Replace(arg3,"-e","*)")
	arg3 = Replace(arg3,"*",chr(34))
On Error Resume Next

do until arg1.eof
	&apos; length is an instance variable that must be
	&apos; set before calling the makeList function. -djork
	if not isempty(length) then
		optionout = Left(Eval(arg3),length)
	else
		optionout = Eval(arg3)
	end if
	
	&apos; output is an instance variable to be retrieved later -djork
	output = output &amp; &quot;&lt;option value=&apos;&quot; &amp; arg1(arg2) &amp; &quot;&apos;&quot;

	if arg1(arg2) = defaultValue then
		output = output &amp; &quot; SELECTED&quot;
	end if

	output = output &amp; &quot;&gt;&quot; &amp; optionout &amp; &quot;&lt;/option&gt;&quot; &amp; chr(13)

	arg1.MoveNext
loop

arg1.MoveFirst

end function

%>

I'll leave it up to you to decipher what ends up making this piece of black magic work.

Colin_McGuigan

At the point where you're Eval()ing, why bother with all the inane formatting rules with "v-" and "-e", and simply have arg3 be the code to evaluate in the first place?

My guess is someone didn't know how to embed quotes.

I'm also curious about the length -- neat that it's not passed in as a param. But I don't figure how it can be used reliably, since the length of arg3 is going to increase by 4 for every occurrence of "v-" in it.

--Colin McGuigan

Benanov

"v-cLast_Name-e & *, * & v-cFirst_Name-e & * * & v-cMiddle_Name-e"

After first 3 lines of code, becomes (slashes used to delimit)

/DBData1.data("cLast_Name") & ", " & DBData1.data("cFirst_Name") & " " & DBData1.data("cMiddle_Name")/

I can see how it works from here. Wow, that's creative. And stupid.