CGI Programming with Perl

by Gunther Birznieks, Shishir Gundavaram, Scott Guelich

Book Overview

Programming on the Web today can involve any of several technologies, but the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) has held its ground as the most mature method--and one of the most powerful ones--of providing dynamic web content. CGI is a generic interface for calling external programs to crunch numbers, query databases, generate customized graphics, or perform any other server-side task. There was a time when CGI was the only game in town for server-side...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565924193
• ISBN13: 9781565924192
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 470 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great Introduction to Programming in CGI

This book is great for people who are starting out programming in CGI. A beginner's knowledge of Perl is required to get the full benefits of the book. I found the authors to be very objective and they touch upon every aspect of CGI. Unfortunately, due to space limitations I suppose, they cannot get too deep into any one topic. That is why this book is good for new comers to CGI. It will show you everything you need to know to get started with writing CGI scripts. They make reference to other books that go deeper into a particular topic (albeit from O'Reilly) throughout the book. I found this book to be an excellent learning tool for someone who is building his or hers first web site based on CGI/Perl. It reads well, explains topics well, and is good at getting right to the point.

Very balanced and complete!

I grabbed this book after reading a review on slashdot.org that rated it a 9 out of 10.When I saw some of the reviews here I had second thoughts, but fortunately I trusted slashdot. Someone here complained that the book talks about using modules, like CGI.pm. It does - there's a whole chapter devoted to CGI.pm, but the following chapter talks about another way to write CGIs: HTML templates (like Embperl, Mason, HTML::Template, etc.).This is an example of how balanced the book is. In both chapters the authors explain that different programmers have different preferences. Instead of only presenting one way of creating HTML output (or ignoring CPAN entirely like other CGI books), they present all the popular options. That lets you choose what works best for you (hey, Perl's slogan is TIMTOWTDI... there is more than one way to do it). Also, now I thorougly know how CGI.pm and Embperl work, and even though I might not use them for the scripts I write from scratch, it helps if I find myself working on a project that does use them (and lots do).This book doesn't just teach you CGI one way, like most other CGI books, and it doesn't promote certain technologies. Instead, it's very complete and the authors clearly show they have lots of experience with CGI.

Complete and well written

I thought this was a very complete, well written description of CGI programming. It's informative reading and also makes a great reference.There've been lots of CGI programming by example books out there that try to show you a few examples and go from there. As this book claims, its approach is to teach you to understand how things work and use examples to support this instead of the other way around. It's complete, and the topics it covers even extend beyond CGI programming to other forms of web programming (especially mod_perl but even Java too).This book doesn't try to teach you Perl, but I've not seen a good book that succeeds in teaching both together. Perl isn't just for CGI programming and there's a lot to it. If you need an intro to Perl, buy "Learning Perl" by Randal Schwartz (also by O'Reilly)... it's not too long and very well written, and after reading that then you'll be ready to learn to apply Perl to CGI.I looked at the errata and there were some errors in the initial printing, but they're fixed in my copy so I can hold that against them.

This is "THE" CGI book

I've done many perl/CGI scripts. I've tried to find a really solid book on teaching me how to write a good perl/CGI script. But most of the book only teach you how to program CGI without teaching you why.This is it!The title is damn right. This is a book about CGI programming. Perl is the major language used in this book but not the main purpose of this book. You will learn a solid background about HTTP and CGI. You might need another Perl book to learn how to program perl, but you definetly will know how CGI works in this book.Thank you, o'reilly!

Superb book!

A great book that teaches you why not how. This book doesn't teach you Perl, it assumes you know Perl - instead it teaches you all the tricks with using Perl on the web. Useful both as an introductory guide and as a quick-reference manual.