In the new version of visual basic scripting, you can now create and use classes. Any programmer should already know what a class is. Therefore I will not explain what they are, only how to create and impliment them in ASP and VBScript. This article is only a short intro. For more information, please consult the VBscript 5.0 reference documentation available at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

To create a class, we use the class object. A class is created by typing Class followed by the class name. Then the class functions and closed by End Class. You should get Something like this:

Class Fubar
  'functions go here
End Class

Now inside the class you can have functions, sub-routines, and variable declarations. Now lets create an example Function that just gives us a message box sayign Hello!.

Class Fubar
  Public Function myBox(strMsg)
     msgbox strMsg
  End Function
End Class

Now to implement the class:

Set myFubar = new Fubar
myFubar.myBox("Hello!")

Wow, pretty simple huh? Notice the Public in front of the myBox function. What this does is tell the script engine that the function is available to the user outside of the actual class code. If we only wanted the function to be used within the class code, we would put Private in front of the function header. Lets take a look at this example:

Class Fubar
  '***only code inside class can use message***
  Private Function message(strMsg)
     msgbox strMsg
  End Function
  '***you can access this function***

  Public Function myBox(strMsg)
     message(strMsg)
  End Function
End Class

If you try and do the following, you will get an error:

Set myFubar = new Fubar
myFubar.message("Hello!") '<---can't do it

In ASP and VBScript, classes are formed exactly the same since asp uses the vbscript scripting engine, so classes will work in both ASP 2.0 and 3.0. That's it for now. Questions, comments, wise cracks, please post them in the forum.