Web Wiz - Green Windows Web Hosting

Mako Oda -

The boy hummed a lullaby, off-key and trembling. Mako closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said: “Then it still plays. Just differently.”

Waiting was her true art. She waited for the cracks to speak. She waited for the light to change across the clay. She waited for the silence after the customer’s last sigh, because that was where the real mending began. mako oda

Mako Oda never raised her voice. Not when the city roared through the open window of her seventh-floor apartment, not when the old pipes in the walls hummed their rusty complaints. She moved like water finding its own level — around obstacles, beneath noise, through the narrow hours of dawn when even the stray cats paused to listen. The boy hummed a lullaby, off-key and trembling

She kept the music box on her worktable for three weeks. When she returned it, the gear had been replaced with a carved piece of cherry wood. The spring was gone, but inside the lid she had painted a small golden line — the shape of a river curling through a valley. Just differently

Her clients brought her heirlooms — a sake cup from a grandmother who had crossed the sea, a tea lid from a childhood she couldn’t remember, a vase shattered in an argument that outlived its cause. Mako would listen. Not with sympathy, but with the attention of a river recognizing a stone. Then she would mix the urushi lacquer, dust it with powdered gold, and wait.

The boy wound the key. No melody came out. But when he held it to his ear, he heard something soft, something steady, like rain on a tin roof, or a mother’s breath in the next room.

One evening, a boy from the noodle shop downstairs brought her a broken music box. “It won’t play anymore,” he said, eyes red from crying. Mako opened the tiny brass lid. Inside, a stripped gear and a snapped spring. She didn’t promise to fix it. Instead, she asked: “What song did it play?”


Mako Oda -


Difficulty: Medium
Download: database_tutorials.zip

In this tutorial we are going to be adding data to the Guestbook database made in the tutorial Part: 1 Connecting to an Access Database.

To make the Microsoft Access database tutorials on Connecting, Adding, Deleting, and Updating, more interesting we are going to use these tutorials to make a simple Guestbook.

In the first database tutorial, Part: 1 Connecting to an Access Database, we learned how to connect to a database and display the contents of a database table in a web page.

In this tutorial we use an HTML form to take a site visitors name and comments and add these to the database. We will then use the page 'guestbook.asp' made in the first database tutorial to display the contents of the database (don't worry if you didn't do the first database tutorial, the 'Guestbook database' and the 'guestbook.asp' page are included in the zip file for this tutorial).


Mako Oda -

First we need to quickly create an HTML page with a form on it to take the input from the user.

In this page we will have two text boxes, one called 'name' and the other called, 'comments', we will then use the post method to send the page to the file, 'add_to_guestbook.asp' that we are going to be creating later in this tutorial, which will add the user input into the database.

<html>
<head>
<title>Guestbook Form</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="white" text="black">
<!-- Begin form code -->
 <form name="form" method="post" action="add_to_guestbook.asp">
     Name: <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="20">
     <br>
     Comments: <input type="text" name="comments" maxlength="50">
     <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
 </form>
<!-- End form code -->
</body>
</html>

Save the page as 'guestbook_form.htm' in the same folder as the Guestbook database.

Mako Oda -

Now we've got the form, to input the data through, out of the way we can make the the page that does all the work, adding the data to the database.

This page contains no HTML so we can start writing the asp straight away, still don't forget the server side script tags, <% .... %>.

First we need to dimension the variables used in the script, so open your favourite text editor and enter the following code.

<%
'Dimension variables
Dim adoCon          'Holds the Database Connection Object
Dim rsAddComments   'Holds the recordset for the new record to be added
Dim strSQL          'Holds the SQL query to query the database

Next we need to create a database connection object on the server using the ADO Database connection object.

'Create an ADO connection object
Set adoCon = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

Now we need to open a connection to the database. There are a couple of ways of doing this either by using a system DSN or a DSN-less connection. First I am going to show you how to make a DSN-less connection as this is faster and simpler to set up than a DSN connection.

To create a DSN-less connection to an Access database we need tell the connection object we created above to open the database by telling the connection object to use the 'Microsoft Access Driver' to open the database 'guestbook.mdb'.

You'll notice the ASP method 'Server.MapPath' in font of the name of the database. This is used as we need to get the physical path to the database. Server.MapPath returns the physical path to the script, e.g. 'c:\website\', as long as the database is in the same folder as the script it now has the physical path to the database and the database name.

'Set an active connection to the Connection object using a DSN-less connection
adoCon.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; Data Source=" & Server.MapPath("guestbook.mdb")

Next create an ADO recordset object which will hold the records from the database and the new record to be added to the database.

'Create an ADO recordset object
Set rsAddComments = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")

To query a database we need to use SQL (Structured Query Language). In the next line we initialise the variable 'strSQL' with an SQL query to read in the fields 'Name' and 'Comments' form the 'tblComments' table.

'Initialise the strSQL variable with an SQL statement to query the database
strSQL = "SELECT tblComments.Name, tblComments.Comments FROM tblComments;"

Set the cursor type we are using to 'adOpenDynamic' so we can move through the recrord set. The integer value for this is 2.

'Set the cursor type we are using so we can navigate through the recordset
rsAddComments.CursorType = 2

Because we are going to be saving an updated recordset back to the database we need to set the LockType of the recordset to 'adoLockOptimistic' so that the recordset is locked, but only when it is updated. The integer value for this lock type is 3.

'Set the lock type so that the record is locked by ADO when it is updated
rsAddComments.LockType = 3

Now we can open the recordset and run the SQL query on the database returning the results of the query to the recordset.

'Open the recordset with the SQL query
rsAddComments.Open strSQL, adoCon

Once the recordset is open we can add a new record onto the end of the recordset. In the next line we let the recordset know we are adding a new record to it.

'Tell the recordset we are adding a new record to it
rsAddComments.AddNew

Now we can add a new record to the recordset. The details taken from the form we created at the start of this tutorial are entered into there relevant fields in the recordset. To get the data entered by the user from the form we use the 'Form' method of the ASP 'Request' object to request the data entered into the text boxes, 'name' and 'comments'.

'Add a new record to the recordset
rsAddComments.Fields("Name") = Request.Form("name")
rsAddComments.Fields("Comments") = Request.Form("comments")

The data has been entered into the recordset we can save the recordset to the database using the 'Update' method of the recordset object.

'Write the updated recordset to the database
rsAddComments.Update

We have finished using the database in this script so we can now close the recordset and reset the server objects.

'Reset server objects
rsAddComments.Close
Set rsAddComments = Nothing
Set adoCon = Nothing

Now that the database is updated we are going to use the 'Redirect' method of the ASP response object to redirect to the 'guestbook.asp' page we created in the first database tutorial, Connecting to an Access Database, so we can display the updated database. Note that if you are going to use the 'Response.Redirect' method you must remember to redirect before any HTML is written.

'Redirect to the guestbook.asp page
Response.Redirect "guestbook.asp"
%>

Now call the file 'add_to_guestbook.asp' and save it to the same directory as the database and the 'guestbook.asp' page, don't forget the '.asp' extension.

And that's about it, you have now created a simple Guestbook for your website, to find out how to delete any of the comments from the Guestbook database read the next tutorial on, Deleting Data from an Access Database.

If you find that you are getting errors connecting to the database then please read through the Access Database Errors FAQ's, practically make sure you have the correct 'ODBC Drivers' installed on your system and if you are using the, 'NTFS file system', make sure the permissions are correct for the database and the directory the database in.

Part 3: Deleting Data from an Access Database (Guestbook Pt.3) >>


Accompanying Tutorials in this Series

Now that you have completed this part you should look at the accompanying Tutorials in this series





Become a Fan on Facebook Follow us on X Connect with us on LinkedIn Web Wiz Blogs
About Web Wiz | Contact Web Wiz | Terms & Conditions | Cookies | Privacy Notice

Web Wiz is the trading name of Web Wiz Ltd. Company registration No. 05977755. Registered in England and Wales.
Registered office: Web Wiz Ltd, Unit 18, The Glenmore Centre, Fancy Road, Poole, Dorset, BH12 4FB, UK.

Prices exclude VAT at 20% unless otherwise stated. VAT No. GB988999105 - $, € prices shown as a guideline only.

Copyright ©2001-2026 Web Wiz Ltd. All rights reserved.