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Title: CGI Programming with Perl by Gunther Birznieks, Scott Guelich, Shishir Gundavaram ISBN: 1-56592-419-3 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.36 (28 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A good place to start
Comment: I purchased "CGI Programming with Perl" thinking it was, like many O'Reilly books, a bible of programming how-to for the working programmer. It's not. What it is, in fact, is a pretty good introduction to writing CGIs with Perl for someone who has some basic knowledge of Perl and HTTP, but who has never done any CGI programming. And that's just the position I was in when I bought it.
The first third of the book is introductory in nature, with an introduction to how forms and CGI scripts work, some discussion of parsing forms in other languages, and some simple examples. The bulk of the book contains more complex examples of tasks like writing questionaires, interfacing with relational databases, maintaining state, graphics and so forth. I did glean a lot of useful information there.
The biggest problem with this book is a problem that's really common to all book on Internet programming: Standards are changing so fast that a year old book is likely to contain chapter upon chapter illustrating obsolete techniques and libraries. In "CGI Programming" there are a lot of examples using Perl modules that haven't really caught on, while some of the newer modules (obviously) aren't meantioned. Another problem is that the book is kind of scattershot in the attention it gives different topics.
Still, I think this is one of the better books for someone with basic Perl skills looking to get started with CGIs. There's enough detail here to start writing CGIs, and enough information out there on the web to go on learning.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Introduction to Programming in CGI
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: After the errata, then what . . .
Comment: I've got the July 2000 printing and was amazed at the errata and the errata items yet to be "confirmed"! As an example of the latter, just beyond half-way through the book there's an address book cgi script some 10 pages in length of which only the first page or so is explained. The script is an attempt to use the Perl DBI along with the DBD::CSV modules (utilizing SQL statements) to explain the database role in "Data Persistance"! The problem is that the "getQueryResults" subroutine in the script doesn't return any records when searching for particular field values (and returns every record in the database if no values are entered in the "search" form). In addition the "doUpdate" module reports that an update has been completed when in reality there has been no change to the database! If you're planning on using the book to learn some CGI with Perl, then you're going to be set back by this and other code malfunctions scattered throughout the book!
Even though it's a step up from the CGI Primer Plus for Windows book (and gets a 4 star rating), it still leaves much to be desired for the person who learns by coding!
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Title: Programming Perl (3rd Edition) by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant ISBN: 0596000278 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Learning Perl, Third Edition by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix ISBN: 0596001320 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Programming the Perl DBI by Alligator Descartes, Tim Bunce ISBN: 1565926994 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Perl Cookbook, Second Edition by Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington ISBN: 0596003137 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 21 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Advanced Perl Programming by Sriram Srinivasan ISBN: 1565922204 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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