Open Source Linux® Web Programming [Paperback]

Christopher A. Jones (Author), Drew Batchelor (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764546198 | ISBN-13: 978-0764546198 | Publication Date: October 27, 1999

This complete toolbox of techniques shows you how to harness the open-source power of Linux -- and create world-class Internet applications. Offering a step-by-step approach to building an e-commerce site, a human resources site, bringing corporate data online, and more, expert Web developers Christopher Jones and Drew Batchelor explain the complexities of 3-tier Web applications, distributed architecture, and object-oriented programming -- and demonstrate how to use open source tools such as Perl, XML, and Java to build scalability, flexibility, and performance into your Internet site.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Open Source Linux Web Programming, authors Christopher A. Jones and Drew Batchelor have written a noteworthy text to enhance the conceptual and functional proficiencies of beginning Web programmers. Perhaps of more value, they describe the Internet from a viewpoint that would benefit the mildly confused information managers whose technical generation gap makes the state of the art seem like an ongoing jumble of acronyms of clients, servers, interfaces, and markup languages.

The first two-thirds of the book reads like a well-thought-out college syllabus for a single-semester course in Web programming. Revealing their preferences for Perl and XML, Jones and Batchelor introduce the pieces of Web programming with a potentially deceptive mix of the practical and the theoretical.

In a series of compact 50-page chapters, the authors move with laudable efficiency through Web architecture, the Apache server, Perl and its uses in the CGI applications, and to HTML and its generalization as XML. The course ends with an intriguing pedagogical project: a client-based Web content administrator with XML. Does that seem like a security problem for real-world applications? No doubt, but Jones and Batchelor never address security problems of any kind. They are justified in ignoring security as long as their students and readers are planning to study Internet security in later classes or books.

The final third of the book introduces a forward-looking model of the Internet: Java applets and the Java/XML interface. While XML belongs more to the future than the present, the future is clearly now for Java. The final chapters on server error-handling and Web site administration are little more than an annotated outline of key issues with bits of code. These chapters should be browsed for nuggets of practical advice, but the authors' tutorial energies are spent on XML applications and run dry before the practical aspects of Web management are addressed.

In a quirky but unobjectionable way, Jones and Batchelor and their editors at M&T Books have fathomed and met the need for a hurry-up guide to Web programming. Security, databases, and auxiliary applications like PHP3 are missing, but not missed. --Peter Leopold

From the Back Cover

Open Source Linux^® Web Programming This complete toolbox of techniques shows you how to harness the open-source power of Linux — and create world-class Internet applications. Offering a step-by-step approach to building an e-commerce site, a human resources site, bringing corporate data online, and more, expert Web developers Christopher Jones and Drew Batchelor explain the complexities of 3-tier Web applications, distributed architecture, and object-oriented programming — and demonstrate how to use open source tools such as Perl, XML, and Java to build scalability, flexibility, and performance into your internet site. Working Solutions for Programming Challenges

• Get an introduction to the complex Web architecture used in distributed systems
• Configure the Apache Web server for CGI use
• Master Perl CGI libraries and modules — and their cross-platform capabilities
• Separate HTML display content from CGI application logic
• Optimize the functionality of your Web applications with XML
• Modularize a Web site for hands-off administration by linking Perl components
• Expand your application by using Java Applets as a client-side resource
• Create an XML chat server for real-time collaboration
• Analyze the deployment of a Linux application — including load-balancing hardware and scalability concerns

On the CD-ROM:

• XML Application Server
• Microstar Ælfred Parser
• Kaffe Open Source Java Virtual Machine
• PostgreSQL 6.5
• And all sample code

www.idgbooks.com

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Product Details

• Paperback: 476 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (October 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764546198
• ISBN-13: 978-0764546198
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,760,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great web techniques. Exceptionally well-written book ., February 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Source Linux® Web Programming (Paperback)

This book is a true eye-opener for any web programmer. Everybody has heard of, experiment with, and develop in Perl, Java, XML, Apache and Linux, but I haven't not seen any book that explains how to combine these "open source" technologies together in such an original way until I read this book!

For example, the authors don't just show you how to program in Perl, but they actually teach you NEW cutting-edge techniques such as developing n-tier, component-based, object-oriented applications (separating logic from content from presentation). The authors take you slowly through the steps of building components for the "header", "footer", "navigation bar", "content", and "template" with plenty of commented code for each component, leading finally to a complete e-commerce catalog site! (No traditional CGI programming here).

I actually followed through all the code and was hooked. The Perl techniques presented here are complete and I have not seen them anywhere in any of the other books dedicated to Perl (even the O'Reilly books). The source included in the CD actually worked.

I am especially excited by the XML materials in chapter 5 and 6. Chapter 5 is a concise intro to XML. The techniques for parsing XML with the XML::Parser module (based on James Clark's Expat) are presented with great comments, always leading to a complete application at the end of the chapter. No other Perl books I've bought (and I do have many of them with animals on the cover) have ever explained to me how to use the XML::Parser, but this book does it exceptionally well in just one chapter! (chapter 6).

Chapter 7 shows you how to build a Perl XML-driven site. How to translate from XML to HTML, from HTML form to XML and how to manage XML content with Perl scripts.

The rest of the chapter discussed applications servers with a focus on the open source XAS, an XML Java-based application server. Again, the authors show you step by step the techniques for building Java applets and clients, parsing XML in Java and building an XML-driven site in Java. (Here I would like to see more server-side programming with Java servlets).

The final chapters discussed some issues on foolproofing and deploying your applications in Linux.

The book is not a tutorial on Perl or Java (the authors made that clear in the introduction. The readers are expected to have a basic understanding and working knowledge of both).

I really like the style with which the authors lay out the materials. The authors give a lot of comments on the code. I like the fact that, throughout the book, the code and component/routine lead up to a complete useful non-trivial application at the end of each chapter. It motivates me and pulls me along. It's a style that appeals to me and helps me to absorb the materials. I find myself adapting the techniques into my web programming projects.

I highly recommend this book to any web programmer who wants to dabble in new development techniques with Perl, Java, XML, Linux, Apache and open source tools. A remarkably up-to-date book on current issues of web development. (No fluff). It doesn't just talk about them, it actually shows you how to implement them.
5 stars.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Scarily Inaccurate, December 27, 2000

By 

David Cross "davorg" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Source Linux® Web Programming (Paperback)

I don't know anything about the subject matter covered in the later chapters, but the Perl that the authors demonstrate in chapters 3 to 7 is some of the most badly written and buggy Perl that I have ever seen. Many of the example programs won't even compile as they have typos in them that would have been caught if the book had been given the most cursory glance by a technical editor. I searched the IDG (sorry, 'Hungry Minds') web site to see what errata had been made available, but there didn't seem to be any.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars WEB programming and dont talk about Serlvet, C, etc..., April 4, 2000

By 

Israel Olalla (Las Rozas, Madrid) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Open Source Linux® Web Programming (Paperback)

When i bought this book i was looking for a whole sight of the tools that i can find in opensource, not only a few... this book needs a roadmap view.

Why? theres is no reference for C or JAVA. Why? theres no refence to modules for Apache? Why? theres no references to JDBC, DBD/DBI, databases in general....

Anyway a good book? but with a quite good aproach to the problem