Dynamic ASP Page?

[DavidM]

Hi all - I've been wondering how folks do this for some time...

I've noticed when I go to various websites to read online articles, when the
link is clicked, I frequently see a file such as NewsArticle-17229.asp.

The ASP file is totally different for each article.

How is this done?

Is there an ASP file created that is unique for each article?

The # on the end appears to change.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[wayne-o]

I guess this is possible. Maybe they have a CMS which rather than
punching all of the content into a DB they create a file on the fly and
only store reference to the filename. I have noticed the same thing,
but I am yet to figure out the benefits, sometimes they are straight
HTML pages.


w

 

[Tim Williams]

Custom 404?
The page itself perhaps does not exist at all, and the custom 404 just
creates the required content based on the article id (17229) ?

http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/123000-1.shtml

Tim.

 

[DavidM]

Does this mean they may have some URL ReWrite or something setup and a mask
to simply run a page based on the article ID?

The previous poster who mentioned CMS possible writing a cache file out
sounds plausible.

I'm not sure of the advantages of having umpteenth ASP pages just to display
a single article.

Seems to me that having one page that dynamically reads/displays the article
based on the passed URL would be ideal.

Opinions?

 

[Tim Williams]

Does this mean they may have some URL ReWrite or something setup and
a mask to simply run a page based on the article ID?

That sounds more or less how it works

The previous poster who mentioned CMS possible writing a cache file
out sounds plausible.

Also a possible approach, unless you have thousand of pages to
generate and update.

I'm not sure of the advantages of having umpteenth ASP pages just to
display a single article.

Seems to me that having one page that dynamically reads/displays the
article based on the passed URL would be ideal.

See this page:
http://www.asp101.com/articles/wayne/extendingnames/default.asp

Plenty more info on Google.

Tim.

 

[Ben Strackany]

Custom 404 would be the way to go unless you start to max out on
performance. Then it may be worth it to generate all those files once from a
database or script.