Overcome the classic ASP 200kB upload limit in IIS Express
The problem: by default classic ASP developers face a 200kB (200000 Bytes) upload limit in IIS Express. Unlike in IIS5-11, IIS Express has no GUI-way to configure this value.
IIS Express is available as a development-host in various MicroSoft IDE's like Visual Code and Visual Studio. I use it in Webmatrix, an IDE that MicroSoft decided to stop developing some years ago, but still available on my 7 year old laptop.
The solution: change the ASP limits for maxRequestEntityAllowed in
C:\Users\XXXX\Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config
Search for "<asp ". Change the entry to:
The maximum value for is maxRequestEntityAllowed is 2147483647 (integer / 2GB). But in my experience the real upload limitation in classic ASP is 100MB approximately. When uploading larger files, I get a "Microsoft Cursor Engine error '8007000e' - out of memory"-error.
Not only will this enable uploading larger files. It will also allow to submit large datasets to urls (in an ajax call for instance).
You can read more about the ASP limitations in IIS here.
- JohnW says: (10/04/2023 15:48:41)Have you tried editing Classic ASP with the current version of Visual Studio. It doesn't seem to like 32 bit. If you try to connect to a 32 bit ODBC source (ie Access JET) you can't. If you start IIS Express you find that you can't use 32 bit COM objects. I haven't a way around this, although I've always primarily used a local installation of "proper" IIS as my dev server so I haven't looked very hard.
I liked WebMatrix a lot more than I like VS Code - Pieter says: (11/04/2023 13:53:01)John, you're right. I just tested QS in Visual Studio Code and it does not work. Visual Studio Code comes with a few IIS Express plugins. They seem to be non-MicroSoft-managed though. They are configured to disable 32bit com. Exit Visual Studio Code... never liked it anyway.
In Visual Studio 2017 you could configure IIS Express to enable 32bits, under Tools/Options/Projects and solutions/Web projects. Not sure about more recent versions of Visual Studio.
But the thing is, classic ASP developers are stuck with Notepad++ when it comes to coding. I like that editor. It's not only free, it's extremely fast and powerful. You can easily search for anything particular in 100's of 1000's of files. Try that with with any MS-product... It also has some basic classic ASP syntax highlighting. It's got all you need. - JohnW says: (11/04/2023 20:27:40)Yes, that setting is still there in VS 2022 in Projects and Solutions/Web Projects. I don't know if I'd have found it buried there if you hadn't told me where to look, so cheers for that
I've used Notepad++ before but my text editor of choice is EditPlus. It also has good syntax highlighting and a global search function, along with built in FTP/SFTP, integration with Git and an editable clip text directory, so you can add things like "Set objConn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection "). It costs a few dollars which I'm happy to pay.
Have you ever tried using MySQL as a backend for QS or aspLite - it works pretty well with Classic ASP? - Pieter says: (12/04/2023 12:46:05)I have never considered to use MySQL with classic ASP as the driver is basically ODBC. When using Access, you can use OLEDB drivers. OLEDB is much faster with Access. And also, as soon as you use MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL or any other DMBS, you're facing high RAM usage from the first database you host. Access does not use RAM. You can have an unlimited number of Access databases without using 1MB of RAM. And as Access is basically a flat-file-based DBMS, Access databases can easily be backupped and restored.
That said, connecting to a MySQL database in classic ASP is as easy as:
dim db : Set db = Server.Createobject("ADODB.Connection")
db.Open "Driver={MySQL ODBC 8.0 Unicode Driver};Server=127.0.0.1;Port=3306;Database=XXX;User=YYY;Password=ZZZ;Option=3;"
where XXX=database name, YYY=username, ZZZ=password
This requires the "MySQL ODBC 8.0 Unicode Driver" installed on your Windows OS. They can be downloaded here: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/
