Classic ASP Revisited: A Simple Name Parsing Function

Recently I was asked to update our homegrown timesheet application that had been written years ago in classic ASP. The update was simply to take a user name in the string format ‘Last Name, First Name’ and convert this to our company standard email format of FirstLetterofFirstName + LastName + @companyname.com

Now it has been years since I wrote any classic ASP, so it took a little bit of looking into the various functions to refresh my memory.

I made use of the following Classic ASP functions:

• On Error Resume Next – to imitate standard try – catch block behavior
• The Split(BaseString, Separator) function to separate the name string
• The Left( function to get the first letter of the first name from the string array
• The UBound( function to get the last entry in the name array
• The Replace(BaseString, StringToBeReplaced, ReplacementString)
• The LCase( function. Alternately I remember also finding the UCase function to be quite useful on occasion.

Here is a test version of the code snippet I ended up using:

Dim UserName
Dim SplitUserNameArray
Dim EmailUserName
UserName = "Cooney, Justin"
On Error Resume Next
SplitUserNameArray = Split(UserName, " ")
 EmailUserName = Left(SplitUserNameArray(Ubound(SplitUserNameArray)), 1) & SplitUserNameArray(0)
 EmailUserName = Replace(EmailUserName, "'" , "")
 EmailUserName = LCase(Replace(EmailUserName, "," , ""))
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
  EmailUserName = "Unknown"
End If
On Error Goto 0
Response.Write(EmailUserName & "@companyname.com")

In writing this function I was especially interested in getting the error handling to work like a try-catch block, which I was successfully able to achieve. Here is the structure with the extra code removed:

On Error Resume Next
' INSERT LOGIC CODE HERE
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
  ' INSERT CATCH CODE HERE
End If
On Error Goto 0

The On Error Goto 0 Command works like a charm in resetting the error and allowing continued execution of the code.

Although not much work is done these days in Classic ASP, I found this task to be fun, and I enjoyed being reminded of the ‘good old days’ when I would work with ASP, Visual Interdev (or even notepad), SQL Server 7 on a daily basis.