Customer Reviews

Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I bought this title back when I was first teaching myself Perl. At the time, I had done some BASIC and VB programming, but knew nothing about Perl and CGI except that it was one of the most common ways to add some interactivity and form handling to a web site.

Admittedly, the coverage of the subject is a little light, and the hold-the-novice-user-by-the-hand- style was actually confusing (she should have used the more standard method of using bold, italics, and monospace fonts to indicate output, user required input, and variables) BUT considering I was at the absolute beginner level with respect to Perl and CGI, I feel the book lived up to my expectations. I wanted something to get me started quickly, and not to assume I knew anything about CGI and PERL but did assume that I knew HTML. I did not want a book that would cover the subject matter exhaustively, just give me a basic "Quick-Start" which it did quite well.

I continued to use the book as a reference for a few months, though it's really not laid out well for that purpose. (I would suggest the O'Reilly Perl CD Bookshelf for that) If you know PERL and CGI basics, this one is not for you, but if you're comfortable with HTML and want to start doing more, It's worth a try.

I taught myself CGI programming with the first edition of this book a couple of years ago, and have spent most of the ensuing time as a professional web programmer. This alone is testament to the effectiveness of Castro's teaching/writing ability.

The second edition does add much that was missing from the first edition, such as the "use strict" pragma that forces programmers to declare variables, and the CGI.pm library that, for one, circumvents the tedium of parsing form data. Arguably the most important edition, however, is the discussion of setting up a local test environment, but it is also in this area that the book falls short.

In particular I find it bothersome that the author does not recommend installing Apache as a test environment. After all, Apache is the environment under which most CGI scripts will eventually run on virtual web hosts running the Linux/Unix operating system.

So by testing with Apache for Windows, you will be emulating the actual production environment of the script much more closely than by using the other web servers that are recommended. In fact, there are a number of (free) products on the market that bundle Apache and Perl together, so that you don't have to go through the extra step of downloading and installing Perl seperately from the web server software, as in the book's examples.

Another sin of omission is that no consideration is given to the persistent storage of data, other than cumbersome text files. However, this has been one of the areas in which the greatest strides have been made since the first edition. Retrieval and storage of data from web applications, using some sort of database, are practically a given today.

Perhaps the author thought that a discussion of the Perl DBI (Database Interface) would be too much of a digression, and would involve setting up additional database software. However, a few of the same bundles I mentioned above not only include Apache and Perl, but also the mySQL database engine.

At the very least I think there should have been discussion of the very simple "DBM" database system available on almost all Unix systems. Perl makes it very easy to store hash arrays to disk in this format, and just as easy to import them into hashes. This would at least provide readers with a stepping stone to eventually investigating the more robust DBI library.

So I rate the content a 5, but I take off one point for what the book lacks.

I just completed a class on writing CGI scripts with Perl, and although this was not part of the reading list for the class, nevertheless it's what I used to actually learn what I needed to know. This is NOT a book about learning Perl. It is about writing CGI scripts using Perl. You'll get a decent introduction to Perl syntax and Castro will move you right into applying it to writing CGI scripts, primarily for handling forms. I'm not aware of any other book that gives you exactly what you need (if this is what you're looking for) in such a nice, compact introduction. The "visual" part of the book (the pictures the previous reviewer is lamenting the absence of), is really just simple "screenshot"-like figures showing what Netscape or Explorer would look like given the particular exercise being explained. No, there are no big color pictures in here, but it's really not necessary. Prior knowledge of HTML is recommended, but not absolutely necessary as the author spends some time explaining the HTML syntax behind forms.

Although I am computer knowledgeable and have several certifications, I knew absolutely nothing about Perl and CGI before reading this text. I looked at several other texts that were larger but seemed to contain a lot more fluff instead of actually useful information. This book was excellent for learning Perl and CGI starting from complete ground zero.
Within hours I was creating and testing scripts and actually wrote one to do what I needed done. I also downloaded another script that would not work and was able to troubleshoot and fix it to do what I needed. An excellent book that walks you through the steps one item at a time it was easy to understand and work through.
One of the things that this book contained that I did not see in other books was instructions on how to download, install and setup a personal server so that you can test the scripts you write as you learn. This information alone makes this book superior to most others. There is no better learning environment than being able to actually write and test the scripts.
Some HTML knowledge is assumed, however it is very little. Picking up a basic HTML book allows you to quickly come up to speed with the knowledge assumed. On the other hand, the required HTML knowledge is easily obtained from various sites on the Internet.
I could not recommend this book highly enough for anyone who needs to learn Perl and CGI basics and needs to get up to speed as soon as possible.

I have read several other books in an attempt to learn Perl, but they were either too technical or too boring to even hold my interest. This book is the polar opposite. It is the first Perl manual I've read that actually explains Perl line by line, in a language that even an old dog novice like myself can understand. Instead of filling the pages with line after line of obscure Perl code without the slightest hint of explanation, the code here is explained beautifully. My questions were answered almost before they came to mind. That is why this book was so effective.

I was writing simple cgi's even before finishing the book. This afternoon, I wrote a cgi that takes input from a lengthy form, prints a confirmation/thank you html page to let the user know that their input was received, sends the parsed and formatted form data via email to the receiving party, and generates an include file that automatically updates an online html log that everyone in the company can see and track. Two weeks ago I couldn't have possibly done this. Honestly, I wouldn't even have known where to start.

No, this is not a complete Perl training manual, nor is it meant to be. But if you need to use Perl/CGI on the web to process forms and information, there is no better book on the market. I use it everyday and highly recommend it to everyone.

This is a very basic CGI book-- perhaps a little too basic.

I really like the format of the Visual Quickstart books. The books are easy to follow, and it's simple to open to book to any section, read the page and close the book. Unlike other Perl books, there are no long, drawn out diatribes.

Here's the big problem with this book-- The author only covers a single part of Perl's CGI capabilities-- she covers the param() function, but little else.

It would be enormously helpful if the book covered other basic perl topics --- the header() function to create the HTML header, the print_head("This is the title") function to start the HTML page, the p("Hello World!") function to print a paragraph, etc.

It's fine that the book doesn't cover object-oriented programming, but it's silly that the book doesn't cover other basic HTML functions.

Some other minor downsides:

- The book uses many CGI examples which need a HTML form and a CGI script. The book doesn't contain the text for the HTML forms, and it's hard to follow the examples if you don't have the HTML in front of you.

- The book is dated, and discusses out-of-date HTML. Most sites have been running XHTML (or something close) for several years, but this book uses bad HTML4.0 examples.

- If the examples would be much easier to read if the author used proper indenting for the Perl code.

Many educational books lead you along a plodding path, and if you skip ahead, you find yourself lost in the woods.

My motivation to learn anything is that I already have a practical application in mind and I want to gain enough knowledge to write it. If I don't have more applications on the back burner, I may well forget half of what I learned once the application is written, but I accept that about myself.

The organization of this book was such that it was easy to jump back and forth through the chapters, getting a handle on the bits I needed to write my script.

When I paused a few months, forgot a lot, then had another bright idea for a script, it was easy to dive right back in, using this book to refresh my knowledge and expand it a bit.

On the other hand, if you're coming in as a stark beginner, you can go through it chapter by chapter while you build up the confidence to start bouncing around.

It is mainly a survey of different concepts, without going too deeply into any. That's why it's called a "quickstart" guide. It's supposed to help you get out of the gate quickly and it does so excellently.

You may find that once you go beyond simple scripting, you'll need a more advanced book to help you dig down into the guts of Perl, but once you get to that point, you'll find that the [ahhhem] dollars you spent on this book were a heck of an investment, because you'll be able to plow into those more advanced tomes and not feel lost.

This book is clearly geared towards the non-programmer or beginning programmer. It's similar to a "Perl CGI for Dummies" book, with an introduction that includes the section "What is a program?". The author holds your hand every step of the way. If you like step-by-step explanations of what to do, this is the book for you.

If you're a programmer, I'd recommend one of the O'Reilly Perl books, an HTML book, and the "perldoc CGI" documentation that comes free with perl. You might want to borrow this book, as I did, to pick up some tips on forms and cookies.

If you don't know much about programming, you'll want to investigate books on Java Servlets and JSP as well. Perl and Java are two very different programming languages, and most people will strongly prefer one language over the other.

One especially weak section of the book is the chapter on debugging. The author explains how to check the syntax of a Perl script without running it, but doesn't explain that you can actually run a Perl CGI script from the command line. She also makes the horrendous mistake of not recommending "use strict" and the "-w" switch! There's also no mention of how to use the perl debugger, or the GUI debugger from ActiveState. I can't imagine trying to debug my Perl CGI programs using her rudimentary techniques.

I have purchased numerous books on CGI and Perl and most of them were scholarly and complete, but none did what this book did, and that is actually get my problems solved. The term "Quickstart" is acurate, the book dove right in to building forms and processing them with Perl and I have made more progress with this one book than I have with the other 3 combined. I would buy any book written by this author.

I have read several "Visual Quickstart Guides" and this is one of the best. It is extremely accessible to beginning programmers and useful for the novice. Elizabeth Casto put a great deal of time and effort into making sure that her instructions were detailed and consistent. If you have little experience with programming and want to jump into CGI Scripts and PERL this book is a great place to start.