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if someone could tell me what is wrong with this rather simple code inside my file called "test.asp"?

<script src="jquery-1.2.6.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript" runat="server"></script>
<script src="jquery.xml2json.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript" runat="server"></script>

<%
var xml = '<xml><message>Hello world</message></xml>';
var json = $.xml2json(xml);
alert(json.message);
%>

The error message that I am getting is Microsoft JScript runtime error

'$' is undefined

I have tried XMLObjectifier as well as xml2json.js, and the common theme is that I can't seem to execute these javascript libraries inside my classic ASP file.

My understanding is that JScript, which is what ASP is written in, is javascript...just on the server side. So can I run/reference .js files inside my test.asp file?

Thank you very much! As you can tell, my asp file produces xml, but I want to transform it to json.

user798719
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    You'd need to use server-side include syntax (sorry, I don't remember what that is for classic ASP). Using script elements referring to the JS files as you've done will make that part of the page that is returned to the browser and the browser will then load those scripts. You certainly can't produce an `alert()` server-side. Why don't you run the JS client-side? – nnnnnn Jul 11 '12 at 07:18
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    jquery isn't intended to be run on the server side (hacks notwithstanding). This code won't do what you think it will, since the server will ignore everything outside the `<%` tags. Even if you managed to get the server to recognize the jquery scripts, it won't run. Basically, convert your server-side `<%` blocks into client `script` blocks. But then you won't have any server-side processing at all; it will all be done on the client. – Tom Jul 11 '12 at 07:27
  • Thanks for this. If my client is a smartphone native app (not a smartphone's web browser) that expects JSON returned from my test.asp file, then what are my options? I'm unfortunately stuck with classic asp. – user798719 Jul 11 '12 at 14:02
  • @user798719 -- check this out: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6977261/how-to-return-a-json-object-in-classic-asp Basically I just googled 'return json from asp', that should get you started. good luck! – Tom Jul 13 '12 at 03:02

2 Answers2

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Please note - I am not ignoring the fact that JScript can be used in the browser as per the excellent info on this answer: What's the difference between JavaScript and JScript?. This question clearly is talking about JScript in the context of the server, so from here on the term 'JScript' means the version(s) of JScript that are used in ASP or in Windows scripting

Two languages can be equal/similar (although please note JScript is not exactly JavaScript), but their runtime environments can be completely different.

The JavaScript that these libraries you're trying to use is a client-side scripting language that expects to run in a browser. The browser is then the runtime environment for this code, providing the objects and services as laid out in the HTML spec (for example, the intrinsic window or document objects).

JScript is a javascript-like language that, in this case, expects to run on a server (or in the Windows scripting environment) - i.e. in a completely different runtime environment to a browser

In this context, then, the idea of including a client javascript library on the server is, well, erroneous to put it politely. The closest you can ever really get is on a server platform like Node.js which is 'pure' JavaScript; but even that can't run client libraries like jQuery because they rely on the runtime environment provided by the browser. Yes, that can be 'faked' and 'stubbed'; but not for any real benefit.

Stop trying to do this, and rewrite it as normal client-side code.

Community
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Andras Zoltan
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  • Thank you very much. I was beginning to suspect this--things like xml2json and XMLObjectifier can not be used on the server. The use case was for a smartphone to call test.asp, and test.asp returns xml natively using Response.Write(). I just need test.asp to return JSON instead. Because the client is a smartphone, and a native app and not a smartphone's browser, I think that I can not use xml2json. Am I correct that I would need to use an XSL stylesheet to transform to JSON? Is this my only option? – user798719 Jul 11 '12 at 13:58
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    An XSL would definitely be an option - I personally wouldn't relish writing it but it's definitely the simplest approach I know of. – Andras Zoltan Jul 11 '12 at 14:07
  • Thanks again. Just for my knowledge and anyone elses, could you list a few of the other options that you were thinking of? – user798719 Jul 11 '12 at 15:12
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I've used JScript to interop between a modern React (node) project, a legacy classic ASP project and an aging web forms project. Classic ASP's ability to use JScript on the server was extremely useful. I was able to centralize all settings (api, connection strings, app settings, etc.) between Classic ASP, web forms, and a node (react) project. Once they were all reading the same settings, I removed their individual web.config settings

Babel has a JScript transform that lets you transpile your code an additional level to JScript (I transpiled ES2016 -> ES5 -> JScript for the Classic ASP bundle).

include/config.js (babel-generated settings)

var config = {
    "cdnBaseUrl": "https://api.example.com",
    "apis": { ... },
    ...
}

include/Config.asp

' Import the global JSON object from crockford to parse JSON in VBScript server-side
<script language="JScript" runat="server" src="json2.js"></script>

' Import global config object that can be called from JScript and VBScript interchangeably
<script language="JScript" runat="server" src="config.js"></script>

<script language="JScript" runat="server">
  /** DEFINE GLOBAL FUNCTIONS THAT CAN INTEROP WITH VBSCRIPT HERE */

  function requireScript(path) {
      var resourceUrl = config.cdnBaseUrl + path
      return ('<sc' + 'ript src="' + resourceUrl + '"></sc' + 'ript>')
  }

  ....
</script>

include/AppHead.asp

<!-- Include the settings and global helpers -->
<!--#include virtual="/include/Config.asp"-->

<!-- Build script tags in head that point to the correct CDN base url -->
<%=requireScript("/assets/react-client.js")%>

It would have been torture to write adapters for all the settings (parsing XML / JSON with VBScript is terrible).

cchamberlain
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