Binding to Items in the Web Store

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

The ADO Record object has only one method used to bind items in a Web Store: the _Record.Open method. This method is not only used to bind to existing items, but also is used to create ones. You control the behavior of the Open method, such as whether to create a new item, or overwrite an existing item, using various parameters of the method. For example, to open and bind an item for both read and write access, you specify the adModeReadWrite flag in the third parameter. To force the creation of a new item, you specify the adCreateCollection or adCreateNonCollection options in the fourth parameter; the first creates a folder item (a collection of other items) and the second creates a file (non-collection).

CDO objects directly bind to items in the Web Store using the Open, SaveTo, and SaveToContainer IDataSource interface methods. Both the Open and SaveTo methods are similar to the ADO Open method except that with the CDO objects, the initial direction of data flow is defined as part of the method: Open first copies data from the store into the object, and SaveTo saves the data within the object into the item. In both cases, when the operation completes the CDO object is bound to the item in the store. The SaveToContainer method is just a variation on the SaveTo method, freeing the caller from having to invent a unique name for the item within the folder. In this case, a globally unique identifier is automatically generated and used to create the item URL.