Date Published: 2002-08-28

A superb book written by two hard-core Perl advocates, succeeds in its stated mission to offer a complete demonstration of the use of Perl for CGI applications. Rather than simply describing how Perl excels at CGI apps, they show you -- with elegantly written examples for a wide variety of CGI applications.

Writing CGI Applications with Perl
	Authors:	Kevin Meltzer and Brent Michalski
	Publisher:	Addison-Wesley Pub Co
	Companion Website:	http://perlcgi-book.com/
	ISBN:	0201710145
	Buy Online:	Amazon.com
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	Review Rating:

A superb book written by two hard-core Perl advocates, succeeds in its stated mission to offer a complete demonstration of the use of Perl for CGI applications. Rather than simply describing how Perl excels at CGI apps, they show you -- with elegantly written examples for a wide variety of CGI applications. See the table of contents below.

This book is not written for the absolute beginner. People who already have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Perl, and some experience with CGI programming, will get the most out of Writing CGI Applications with Perl.

One of my favorite features is the comprehensive line-by-line discussion of the code provided. The authors leave no room for uncertainty -- they provide sample code and then explain it in clear and concise terms. In one extreme example, the following regex is completely demystified in only 2 paragraphs.

$raw =~ s!((ht|f)tps?://)([\w-]*)((\..[^\s]*)+)!
<a href="$1$3$4" target="external">$1$3$4</a>!g;

Using a unique and refreshing approach to Perl explication, the authors promote the reader's clear understanding of the code without excessive verbosity. Some code snippets are completely explained in only one sentence; others, like the example above, can take 33 lines or more. The authors demonstrate a remarkable ability to remain focused on the code at hand while avoiding the sidetracks that plague many of the Perl writers today.

Compared to another popular work, Programming the Perl DBI, Writing CGI Applications with Perl gets the reader creating and querying databases via the DBI module much more quickly - without the in-depth theoretical discussion on SQL and relational databases. I recall becoming somewhat frustrated with Programming the Perl DBI because it took so long to weed through the gory details before getting to the heart of the matter. Writing CGI Applications with Perl fits my preferred method of study much more closely, without sacrificing content or comprehensiveness.

This is not to say that Programming the Perl DBI is an unsatisfactory book. On the contrary, it is a very good source for theory, background, and (finally!) implementation. If you want to hit the ground running with DBI (and the other covered topics), Writing CGI Applications with Perl is, in my opinion, the better first choice.

Writing CGI Applications with Perl is an excellent book. Anyone involved - or anyone who would like to be involved -- with programming CGI with Perl will find it extraordinarily useful.

Table of Contents

Preface.
Acknowledgments.

1. Perl, CGI, and This Book.
2. What You Should Know.
3. Using Your Environment.
4. Introduction to Web Forms.
5. Working with Cookies.
6. Access Counters.
7. Web Based File Uploading.
8. Tracking Clicks.
9. Using mod_perl.
10. Web-Based E-mail.
11. Introduction to DBI and Databases on the Web.
    
12. Tied Variables.
    
13. Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason.
    
14. Document Management via the Web.
    
15. Dynamically Manipulating Images.
    
16. RSS and XML. (This chapter is available in PDF format)
    

Appendix A: Server Codes.
Appendix B: Environment Variables.
Appendix C: POSIX::strftime() Formats.
Appendix D: General Public License.
Appendix E: Artistic License.
Appendix F: Perl Documentation.
Appendix G: ASCII Codes.
Appendix H: Special HTML Characters.
Index.