Writing CGI Applications with Perl [Paperback]

Kevin Meltzer (Author), Brent Michalski (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201710145 | ISBN-13: 978-0201710144 | Publication Date: February 25, 2001 | Edition: 1

Writing CGI Applications with Perl is a start-to-finish guide to accomplishing key Web development tasks by fully using the power of Perl and CGI together. Using extensive examples, careful line-by-line explanations, and skill-stretching exercises, it not only provides useful cut-and-paste code: it also teaches the practical skills and techniques you'll need to build virtually any CGI-based application. Kevin Meltzer and Brent Michalski cover every key area of Web application development with Perl: database integration, form and file handling, security, e-mail, graphics, and more. The book's in-depth coverage includes: working with HTML Web forms and obtaining user input; placing cookies and tracking clicks; connecting to POP3 e-mail servers; embedding Perl in HTML using HTML::Mason; remote file management across the Web; creating dynamic images; and working with XML. The book also provides detailed explanations and examples of working with Perl DBI, as well as start-to-finish coverage of configuring and using the popular mod_perl Apache module. All of the sample code will be available at a companion web site.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Writing CGI Applications with Perl offers the most practical examples of applying Web programming techniques to real world problems I've seen yet. The text blends good CGI programming techniques, idiomatic Perl, and databases into many large and useful examples. Careful attention is paid to demonstrating solid, scalable code for production use. This is not your typical 'Hello, World' CGI programming book.
--Clinton Pierce, Perl trainer and author of Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours

With its sophisticated database, network, and multi-platform capabilities, the Perl programming language has emerged as an ideal tool for developing CGI-based Web applications.

Writing CGI Applications with Perl shows you how to use Perl to accomplish the most vital tasks needed for today's online applications. Using numerous examples, line-by-line code explanations, and skill-stretching exercises, this book not only provides useful cut-and-paste code for your own programs, but it also teaches you practical skills and techniques that will enable you to develop any kind of CGI-based Web application with Perl.

Focusing on the most important areas of Web application development, including database interaction, form and file handling, security, e-mail, and graphics, the book provides in-depth coverage of such specific topics as:

• Working with HTML Web forms and obtaining user input
• Cookies, tracking clicks, and access counters
• Using the mod_perl Apache module
• Connecting to a POP3 server for e-mail
• Perl DBI and databases on the Web
• Tying a hash to a database
• Embedding Perl in HTML with HTML::Mason
• Remote file management via the Web
• Creating dynamic images
• XML and its derivatives, RSS and RDF

In addition, introductory material is provided for newcomers to CGI or Perl. Numerous appendices include handy references as well as a guide to Perl documentation. A companion Web site, http://www.perlcgi-book.com, contains the code for all the examples.

Geared toward the needs of today's professional Web developers, Writing CGI Applications with Perl provides the specific tools, experienced-based techniques, and overall concepts necessary for quality Web application development.

0201710145B04062001

About the Author

Kevin Meltzer has been using Perl since the early '90s for everything from CGI and system administration to database migrations and report generation. He considers himself a "Perl evangelist," and is the founder of the Hartford Perl Mongers (although he now resides in Florida). Kevin has been published in The Perl Journal, and is the judge of their annual Perl Poetry Contest. He is now working for Verio, Inc. as a Perl developer/engineer.

Brent Michalski discovered Perl around 1994 and has been programming in it ever since. He considers himself a "Perl freak" and loves sharing Perl with others. Brent mainly develops CGI applications because he enjoys the Web so much. He has written articles for Web Review, and currently maintains the Perl area on the Dr. Dobb's Journal Web site. Brent is a senior developer at MasterCard International where they let him play with Perl every day.

0201710145AB04062001

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (February 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201710145
• ISBN-13: 978-0201710144
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,076,702 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Head And Shoulder Above Most CGI Programming Books, July 19, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: Writing CGI Applications with Perl (Paperback)

There are a very large number of Perl CGI books in the shops. Unfortunately the number of good Perl CGI books is far smaller. I'm happy to report that this book is one of them.

The problem, of course, with most Perl CGI books is that they are written by people who just don't know very much Perl. That's certainly not the case here. Both Kevin and Brent are well-respected members of the Perl community and they know what they are talking about when it comes to writing CGI programs in Perl.

Another common mistake in Perl CGI books is that the authors try to take people who know a bit of HTML and teach them programming, Perl and CGI all at the same time. The authors of this book realise that this approach is likely to lead to, at best, patchy understanding of any of these concepts so they aim there book at people who are already programmers and who have some knowledge of Perl. This means that they can concentrate of teaching the parts of Perl that are useful when writing CGI programs.

One corner that is often cut when discussing CGI programming is security. This is a very dangerous approach to take as a badly written CGI program can leave your web server open to attack from anyone on the Internet. That's not a mistake that is made here as the authors introduce security in chapter 2. Add to that the fact that the code examples all use -w, use strict and CGI.pm and the book is already head and shoulders above most of its competition.

Early chapters look at common CGI requirements such as file uploads and cookies. Each chapter is full of well written (and well-explained) sample code. The example of an access counter in chapter 6 even locks the file containing the current count - this is possibly a first in a Perl CGI book!

By the middle of the book we have already moved beyond simple CGI programming and are looking at mod_perl. This chapter covers both the "faux-CGI" Apache::Registry module and also writing complete mod_perl handlers.

In the second half of the book we start to look at some bigger examples. The authors present a web-based email system and even a shopping cart. In order to fit these examples into their respective chapters a couple of corners have been cut, but there's enough information there to enable anyone to write the complete systems.

Chapter 13 introduces the HTML::Mason module as a way to separate content from presentation. It's obvious that the author's are big fans of this module and this leads to my only real criticism of the book. At no point do they mention the fact that the same benefits can be gained from using any of half a dozen templating systems found on the CPAN. I would have been a lot happier if they had mentioned things like Text::Template, HTML::Template and the Template Toolkit before picking HTML::Mason as the system for their example.

There are then two more long chapters with examples of a document management system and image manipulation software. Once more the code in these examples would serve as a greating starting point for anyone wanting to implement something along these lines. The last chapter looks at XML and, in particular, the use of RSS files to provide data feeds to other web sites.

All in all this is a very useful book for someone wanting to write web-based applications using Perl. It's packed full of good advice and code that follows all of the best practices for writing CGI programs in Perl. This book won't teach you Perl, but if you've read Learning Perl or Elements of Programming with Perl then you'll find this book easy enough to follow.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effective and Unique, March 5, 2001

By 

J.T. St.Clair (Ellington, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing CGI Applications with Perl (Paperback)

What a pleasure to find a book that succeeds in what it sets out to do. I wanted to improve my ability to write CGI applications with Perl and came away from this book with mission accomplished. As a bonus, the book contains uses for Perl I suspect many people don't know about.

The book uses a variety of methods to make its points--- interactive exercises, cut-and-paste code, extensive documentation, conceptual development, and plain English explanations and descriptions. Each chapter covers a CGI application. Concepts from one section become the foundation for practical, must-know applications covered elsewhere. Information is presented in logical order; chapter 4 doesn't expect you to know code from chapter 7. Truly valuable is the book's focus on "why it works" as well as the "how to do it." The "why" promotes a grasp of how to use a script or technique in other contexts. If you feel something special about that "oh yea, I get it" feeling, I think this book is for you.

I call the book unique because I haven't seen another with the variety of instructional methods, the "building-block" style, or the combination of practical skills with underlying knowledge.

In sum, the authors wrote an excellent book that I recommend to any serious Perl programmer or web designer.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a CGI book that pays enough attention to security!, August 28, 2001

By 

Sean Burke (Ketchikan, Alaska, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Writing CGI Applications with Perl (Paperback)

When I first got this book, I thought "CGI is a much more complex standard than this! For example, what about all the strange things you can do with hidden form variables?" Then in occurred to me that the unifying theme of this book is not "everything you can do with CGI" -- it's "everything you can do with CGI, done SECURELY".

All the various CGI tricks I'd known and used that weren't mentioned in this book, were the sort of thing that a beginning programmer might misuse, and thereby accidentally create a way for some malicious user to, for example, delete or corrupt any file on the filesystem, or order any product for [price]. Since /most/ beginning programmers create programs with just those kind of accidental security problems, I'm glad that this book sees security as a primary goal.

In other words: they show you how to do anything you need in CGI, but they don't give you enough rope to hang yourself with! The other thing that makes me happy with this book is that it wisely takes the (very realistic) perspective that CGIs are programs that have to do something /besides/ just talking to the Web browser -- they have to access a database, send a piece of mail, read from a config file, write to a log file, or whatever other details the task demands. That's just the way the CGI business is, and this book gives you a nice introduction to that way of programming.

I heartily recommend this book for anyone who's starting out doing CGI programming. It assumes you do know some Perl already. If you don't, and you already have a strong programming background in some other language than Perl, can probably just make do with the Perl man pages; but less experienced folks should get /Learning Perl/, or /Elements of Programming with Perl/, or maybe even /Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours/ (which has a good CGI section, incidentally).

One note: currently this book is in its first printing, so there are, as always, typos. The errata list at perlcgi-book.com was quite helpful.