Summary

The Request object is a conduit for information between the client and the server: it encapsulates the information that the user sends, and packages it for storage and use on the server. The Response object has a critical role in handling ASP's transmission of data from the server back to the client. In this chapter, we started with an overview of the interaction, and considered the Write method of the Response object. Then we looked at the attributes of the Request object in some detail. It contains five collections that store information about the user's request. Briefly, they were:

• q– this contains the values that are provided in the URL that is sent by the client.
• Form – this contains the values sent by the client in a form request.
• ServerVariables – this contains information about the request and about the server, stored in the form of server variables.
• Cookies – this stores details of any cookies sent with the request, we look at this in the next chapter
• ClientCertificate – this stores details of any security certificates included with the request

We also looked at the TotalBytes property and the BinaryRead method of the Request object. We then turned our attention to the Response object and considered:

• How to use the buffering methods to control when that information is sent back to the client
• How the Expires and ExpiresAbsolute properties can tell the browser how long or until when to cache the contents of the page
• How the Redirect method can be used to tell the browser to go fetch another page
• How we can use Server.Transfer and Server.Execute as alternatives to Response.Redirect
• And some of the other functions that can affect the information being sent back to the browser

In the next chapter we'll move on to look at two objects that help the server organize Active Server Pages and track the interaction between the server and the clients: the Application and Session objects.