Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, Second Edition (Paperback)

~ Elizabeth Castro (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Perl is one of the most popular scripting languages for adding powerful interactive features to Web pages. Perl lets you place forms on your site that collect and process user input such as comments and product orders; enables visitors to search for information; and can integrate a database into your site, among its many other capabilities. Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide fully revised and updated since its original 1998 release, gets users to the core of CGI scripting with Perl. Even first-time programmers will be able to create useful, workable scripts from scratch, or adapt and customize existing scripts to their own needs. Hundreds of screen shots and clear, easy-to-understand directions make this the perfect Perl book for beginners, as well as a handy reference for those with previous programming experience.

From the Back Cover

Perl is one of the most popular scripting languages for adding powerful interactive features to Web pages. Perl lets you place forms on your site that collect and process user input such as comments and product orders; enables visitors to search for information; and can integrate a database into your site, among its many other capabilities. Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide fully revised and updated since its original 1998 release, gets users to the core of CGI scripting with Perl. Even first-time programmers will be able to create useful, workable scripts from scratch, or adapt and customize existing scripts to their own needs. Hundreds of screen shots and clear, easy-to-understand directions make this the perfect Perl book for beginners, as well as a handy reference for those with previous programming experience.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 2 edition (June 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201735687
• ISBN-13: 978-0201735680
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #200,327 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 2nd edition: Flawed masterpiece, July 4, 2001

By	"webfielding" (Scottsbluff, NE United States) - See all my reviews

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.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Learners Guide, June 9, 2002

By	Harold McFarland (Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Jumping-Off Point, May 8, 2003

By	Greg Bulmash (Lynnwood, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.