FrontPage Tips by Ward Cameron Enterprises
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Passing Parameters from One ASP Page to Another

Passing parameters from one page to another represents one of the most common, but least understood tasks that web developers must accomplish.

Almost every database driven page must develop ways to help site users wade through a mountain of data to select only the most relevant material. You will accomplish this through the passing of parameters from one page to another.

Quick Links

• Step 1 - Creating the Pick List
• Step 2 - Adding the Hyperlink to pass the parameter
• Step 3 - Creating Details.asp
• Step 4 - Using a drop-down list for selecting records
• Step 5 - Passing Parameters as Hidden Fields

The Basics

Before you begin, take a careful look at your data. You MUST plan before you begin these steps. You need to think like your customer and ask yourself: "How will my customer want to track down the important information? And how can I make it easy for them to do so?"

When I created www.MountainNature.com, I had to find a way for users to be able to quickly select any record out of more than 800 plants, animals, birds and landforms. It was a daunting task, but in the end, much of the success this site has garnered has been the result of careful planning at the beginning.

I realized that some of the users looking to identify plants would be botanists. This meant that I needed them to be able to select plants by their Latin names, their Genus and even their botanical Family name. Other site users would prefer to simply pick the name from a list of common names. Still others would need to use color as their way of tracking down a particular plant.

With so many people wanting to work so many ways, what's a website designer to do? The answer is to provide tools for every single one of these groups.

Check out: www.mountainnature.com/Plants/PlantID.htm.

How many pathways do you need?

OK, I know what I need to do, but how do I accomplish it?

The magic behind taking your site visitor on a step-by-step process to finding their data is all based upon passing parameters from one page to another.

Here's the process. A visitor comes to your website and wants to track down a particular product. Since you've already gone through the process described in the preceding section, you have planned several pathways to identification.

You may want them to be able to select from a list of product categories. Once they select a category, they will be taken to a second page that lists the products in that category. Finally, selecting one of those products will take them to a details page with all of the juicy details about that product (along with a buy now button of course).

They may want to select based upon a particular manufacturer. Again, provide a page with a list of manufacturers, let them select one. Then take them to a list of products produced by each manufacturer. Finally, they go to the SAME detail page that the first pathway eventually led them to find.

It's key that you keep the final page the same, say details.asp. This reduces the amount of work you need to do over the long term. The more pages you can make common, despite providing several pathways to arrive there, the better.

In a Nutshell

Simply, page one provides a list of items that your site user will select from. This selection, whether it involves a list of hyperlinked items or a drop-down list, will send the page to a second page which will filter the data based upon the first selection.

When your user selects the item on page 1, the link has a parameter, perhaps ProductID, that is passed to the second page.

Page 2 is set up with another Database Results Wizard to display the details on that product. Here's the key: it was also told to look for the ProductID parameter. When page 1 sends that parameter to page 2, suddenly page 2 knows exactly what data to display.

Click here to begin the tutorial