Andrew Friedl

If you ever tried skinning/templating a web application in Classic ASP you’ll know the challenges involved. Separating the business logic from the presentation code resulted in some bizarre design and not doing so was a sure road to insanity. Many people tried a lot of crazy things to accomplish the end result. Some of them were successful and some were not.

KudzuASP is the result of the desire to write ASP pages without including any HTML within ASP script code. KudzuASP lets you do this more easily that you’d imagine. You really can have an ASP page that is 100% code and your output template can be an HTML document, an XML document, plain text – whatever. Choose your output based on time of day, season of the year, client OS, browser, RSS request or whatever else happens to suit you or your client.

The following criteria that guided the overall design:

• Must provide for complete separation of Script and HTML
• Must be easily extensible without editing the original code
• Must be easy to use
• Must be fast
• Must insure the template is loosely coupled to the code – that is the template drives the layout and not the page which invokes it.

KudzuASP allows you 100% separation of HTML and Script: One may argue that the template tags are code in the HTML but ANY attempt to separate code and HTML generates tags of some sort. The examples included in the download will prove my point if you’re inclined to disbelief.

KudzuASP is easily extensible: The tag handlers are small VBScript classes that act upon specific nodes from the template and the HTML that lies between them. This means that you can extend the template engine by writing you own class (like a menu writer) and then add it to the class. Thanks to ASP scoping rules your extension classes have access to the hosting ASP page functions and variables – very handy.

KudzuASP is also easy to use: Once you start to use the template engine you’ll begin to wonder how you ever coded any ASP pages without it. You can output a simple HTML template in only three lines of Script code.

KudzuASP is fast: The use of classes also prevents you from having to use Eval( ) which is an expensive operation. Using KudzuASP often reduces the time it takes to write an ASP page. It absolutely reduces the time it takes to re-skin a web application.

KudzuASP is event driven: It’s the only template engine for ASP where the template drives the ASP page that hosts it. Once the engine is invoked to generate output it assumes control – calling the functions and methods in order. This means that your ASP page is responding to events in the engine. This means that your ASP page does not have to be fully aware of the structure of the template. So if you move the web page’s Side Panel to the right after your Content Panel you won’t have to modify any Script code – it just happens.

KudzuASP is flexible: You can output XML documents, plain text documents – anything. You can install your own output class and KudzuASP will write output there and not to the response. Generate targeted emails, e-commerce orders or anything else you might need. If you ever thought master pages was only for ASP.NET you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

So if you’re still writing and maintaining Classic ASP you’ll want to check out KudzuASP. It will definitely save you time and it might even save your sanity.

~A