To return data to the browser, the Internet Database Connector merges the HTML extension .htx file and the ODBC data. This combined data is attached to standard HTTP headers (200 OK status, Content-Type, and so on) and passed to the WWW service and returned to the client.
The .htx file is an HTML document with some additional tags enclosed by <%%> or <!--%%-->, which Internet Database Connector uses to add dynamic data to the document. The HTML formatting in the .htx file typically formats the data being returned. There are six keywords (begindetail, enddetail, if, else, endif, and "%z") that control how the data from the database is merged with the HTML format in the .htx file. Database column names specify what data is returned in the HTML document. For example, the following line in an .htx file merges data from the Emailname column for every record processed:
<%begindetail%><%Emailname%><%enddetail%>
The following example shows a complete a complete HTML document that contains IDC tags for data returned from the database (the tags are shown in bold for clarity). Some HTML formatting has been removed to highlight the IDC tags.
<HTML>
<BODY>
<HEAD><TITLE>Authors and YTD Sales</TITLE></HEAD>
<%if idc.sales eq ""%>
<H2>Authors with sales greater than <I>5000</I></H2>
<%else%>
<H2>Authors with sales greater than <I><%idc.sales%></I></H2>
<%endif%>
<P>
<%begindetail%>
<%if CurrentRecord NE 0 %>
Query results:
<B>Author YTD Sales<BR></B>
<%endif%>
<%au_lname%><%ytd_sales%>
<%enddetail%>
<P>
<%if CurrentRecord EQ 0 %>
<I><B>Sorry, no authors had YTD sales greater than </I><%idc.sales%>.</B>
<P>
<%else%>
<HR>
<I>
The Web page you see here was created by merging the results of the SQL query
with the template file Sample.htx.
</I>
<%endif%>
</BODY>
</HTML>
The <%begindetail%> and <%enddetail%> sections delimit where rows returned from the database will appear in the document. Columns returned from the query are surrounded by <%%>, such as <%au_lname%> and <%ytd_sales%> in this example.