JavaScript-friendly alternative to the f(x) = y JScript idiom that's used when setting CDO.Message options

Question

I have an ASP page written in JScript that sends e-mails using CDO.Message. For specifying an SMTP server (and other options) I'm doing something like this:

mail.Configuration.Fields.Item(
    "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") =
    "smtp.example.com";

Now, here comes the catch. I have this code in a stand-alone include file that I include in an HTML page as JavaScript so that I can run unit tests against it in a browser (using JsUnit etc.). I have JavaScript mock objects (Server, Request, etc.) that create a mock ASP environment for the included JScript code. The only problem I have left is with the CDO.Message option setting. Since the f(x) = y syntax that's used in the above code excerpt is not valid JavaScript (invalid left-hand operand), I can't run this piece of code (as it is) within a browser. I'm currently simply bypassing it in my unit test with a conditional that detects whether the environment is truly ASP.

I don't think that there's a JavaScript workaround to this. I'm looking for an alternative syntax (that may use the ActiveX interfaces differently) to setting CDO.Message options that would also be syntactically valid JavaScript.

Answer 1

I figured out the answer when looking at the C++ code example at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms526318(EXCHG.10).aspx.

The solution is to make the assignment explicitly to the Value property:

mail.Configuration.Fields.Item(
    "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver").Value =
    "smtp.example.com";

This way, the code above is valid JavaScript than can be tested with a mock Configuration object.

Answer 2

I've been having the same problem when writing server-side Javascript for IIS, That f(x) = y syntax was failing in my IDE's syntax checker. The solution I found helpful was JScript conditional comments like so:

f(x)/*@cc_on@if(0)*/[0]/*@end@*/ = y;

It puts the subscript index [0] on the end except when running in Microsoft's JScript engine. But, admittedly my solution is a bit hacky. I think in most cases yours is cleaner, so thanks for sharing it.

-Simon