Render, damnit, render!!!

March 19, 2008 7:20 PM

I can't believe I'm asking this, but oh well.... Okay, I write and troubleshoot a lot of code in classic ASP and have IIS running on my local machine...

...this is my development environment. When I am testing things and there are ASP errors (syntax, ADO, etc.) I get "The page cannot be displayed" page which gives me the Technical info about the error -- Error Type, line number, etc. If I upload this page to the live server (production) and run it, the page renders up until the point of failure meaning if the bad code is 2/3 of the way down the page, all the previous code gets rendered and displayed to the browser which is far more useful in troubleshooting the problem in the first place, plus it allows me to do Response.write's so that I can check variables, SQL statements, etc. What do I need to change in my local environment so that errors are treated the same way they are treated in production?

My first thought was some kind of Custom Error page but that didn't seem to be it....maybe I'm missing something...

Thanks in advance!

posted by SoulOnIce to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I has been nearly a decade since I've dabbled in ASP and IIS...but is it something to do with caching the page before it renders? I seem to recall some kind of setting in IIS, where in one case it would process the page in-line, displaying the bits that worked before crapping out, and in the other case it would cache the whole script before sending it to the client, in which case, if it failed, the client got nothing. Hopefully someone else can tell you where this setting is.
posted by Jimbob at 7:33 PM on March 19, 2008

I believe you're looking for Response.Flush.
posted by adipocere at 7:39 PM on March 19, 2008

Best answer: Under IIS, goto the properties of the website/virtual directory you're working under. Select the Home Directory tab, then click Configuration.... I bet you're looking to uncheck the "Enable buffering" under the Options tab. You could also try the checking/unchecking the options under the Debugging tab.
posted by rdhatt at 9:24 PM on March 19, 2008

If you don't have access to the IIS administration console, you can also set Response.Buffer = false as the very first thing in your script to override the behavior.
posted by kindall at 11:24 PM on March 19, 2008

Response by poster: rdhatt, you've got it! Unchecking "Enable buffering" did it. Woo-hoo! Thank you so much!
posted by SoulOnIce at 4:17 AM on March 20, 2008