What elements of ASP and HTML files does ASPHelp document?

Looking at the sample output, the manual and running ASPHelp against some sample projects may not answer this fundamental question.  This article seeks to describe those attributes and how they are documented within ASPHelp.  If there is an aspect you are seeking, please don't hesitate to contact us, it may already be in the product, or may be planned for a future version.  

Web page interfaces 

In traditional object oriented programming, the interface is the public view of the object being exposed.  Using web concepts, an interface is the public view of the variables accepted by an ASP page, the hyperlinks present on a web page, or the forms present on the web page.  Each of these items is responsible for generating data, or processing user inputted data.  

In most web projects, the end user has no knowledge, and no requirement to know the interface exposed by the ASP page.  This isn't true for developers or testers who are responsible for knowing what types of data the ASP page is expecting.  Using object oriented terminology, each web page becomes an object, and the data flow between pages is key to proper site operation.

ASPHelp defines interface elements as those which pass data from one page to another.  This definition includes anchors, forms, frames, image maps request object methods and redirections.  

The following interface items are listed in the default table of contents for ASPHelp generated documentation.

ASPHelp will list the name of the variable for all data access items (POST, GET and cookies), and if any description is supplied with the variable, that description will be included with the variable in the output document. 

Client side script interfaces

Dynamic web content is not only controlled by the HTML data flow, but client side script has the potential to intercept, and modify the data content.  In addition, client script has the ability to present web dialog pages, open new windows in response to client actions and control user navigation.  While the end user generally has limited knowledge of the presence of client side script, they do have the ability to control script execution; including disabling all script access, or installing applications which render certain client script functionality inert.  As a result, developers and testers can benefit greatly from determining the extent to which the web site content can be affected by the end user's configuration.

Client side interface elements are defined as those which result in a change in navigation.  The default table of contents includes web dialogs.

ASPHelp provides the following information on all web dialogs:

ASPHelp provides the following information on all client navigation requests:

Server side data manipulation

Most dynamic web sites are driven with server side processing of client side requests.  In order to maintain system and user state, these sites make use of application and session caches of some form.  Depending on the user's actions, server side redirections can also occur.  ASPHelp is able to document the contents of the intrinsic ASP Application and Session objects.  If your web site makes use of a custom session object, you can optionally specify the custom session object, and ASPHelp will attempt to document session object usage of the custom object.  

ASPHelp will list the name of the variable for all application and session object variables used, and if any description is supplied with the variable, that description will be included with the variable in the output document. 

HTML action elements

HTML action elements are those items in the HTML specification which cause an action to occur on the web page.  These are the items an end user is normally interacting with, and which users assume cause site navigation to occur.  In the case of dynamic web pages, the actual action elements available to the user will change with previous user actions (e.g. removing an item from a comparison list), user identity (e.g. personalized web sites), current server configuration (e.g. contents of Application variables), and the browser chosen by the end user (e.g. an older browser not supporting certain functionality).

ASPHelp defines the following items as HTML action elements:

The following items are documented for anchor tags:

The following items are documented for FORM elements:

The following items are documented for FRAME and IFRAME elements:

The following items are documented for MAP and AREA elements:

Procedural object and method usage

Procedural objects are methods and objects present in either the server side or client side script.  ASPHelp documents the following procedural objects and methods:

The following items are documented for Server.CreateObject calls:

The following items are documented for CreateObject and ActiveXObject calls:

The following items are documented for objects created in JavaScript using the new keyword:

The following items are documented for HTML OBJECT elements:

The following items are documented for HTML METABASE elements describing type libraries:

The following items are documented for all procedural method declarations:

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