CGI Programming 101

Rating:
Summary: A good one
Review: Although this book is only 224 pages, it is supplied with lots of(believe me, with lots of) useful information that other books out there lack. At the same time, I wouldn't call it an ideal CGI book for the reasons that I'll get into below.

My first CGI book was Elizabeth Castro's quick start guide, which does a good job on regex(very good job on regex) and other "getting started" stuff; better than this book's coverage.

But Jacqueline gets as deep as making use of perl modules, and creating those of your own. Even introduces mySql database manipulation with DBI, which I found very usefull. List of SSI elements in Chapter 9 is definitely worth the praise. The whole beauty of perl's taint checking is also explained thoroughly. The book doesn't cover the Formatting capabilities of perl in details, but still it's more detailed than that of Elizabeth Castro's.

Although CGI PROGRAMMING 101 does supply the reader with enormous useful information, in some cases I felt that I needed a little more detailed explanation of the topic. Especially her examples of using DBI and GD were lack of sufficient explanation (of course all the codes worked fine). There's a section called object orientedness(Chp 17), but don't expect much. There's nothing much to discover in there if you're concerned with OOP(except the phrase. "Object Oriented" in case you've never heard it).

If you are a little bit familiar with CGI/Perl or came from a programming background such as C, awk, seed and etc. go ahead and buy this book. If you're a novice, Elizabeth Castro's quick start guide could be a good choice (I hope). But even though you buy Elizabeth Castro's, you'll need another book after that, which probably, will be CGI PROGRAMMING 101.

If CGI programming is more than your hobby. After the aforementioned books, go for Larry Wall's Camel (Programming Perl), 3rd edition, which is concidered Perl's Bible (from the Perl's author).

Rating:
Summary: easy to read, excellent content
Review: i am a fairly bad perl programmer. this book has helped me write some really smart (yet easy to understand) programs which i use everyday.

if you want to get to grips with perl and cgi, get your hands on this book. especially if you know nothing about perl or cgi...

although i recommend php as a better language!

Rating:
Summary: Beginning Perl Programmers Need This Book
Review: I come from a graphic design background and got into web design about 4 years ago. Most of my programming experience has been with Cold Fusion , JavaScript, and HTML. I wanted to learn Perl because I was tired of the limitations of my knowledge base and the frustrating idiosyncrasies of the Windows NT systems and applications that I was enslaved to. After dozens of other Perl books I stumbled onto Ms. Hamilton's.

This is the perfect book for a beginner. She painlessly takes the reader into the very powerful and liberating language of Perl and immediately shows you how to incorporate it into your web designs. She is a fantastic teacher. Her code works and the examples are real world.

If you are new to Perl and CGI, not a programmer, know HTML, and are totally confused as to where to start, start with this book and then go on to the O'Reilly book. "Learning Perl, 2nd Edition".

I also recommend signing up for an account with Hamilton's web hosting company CGI101.com for the following reason. Her hosting site is very CGI friendly and all the scripts work flawlessly on her system. That way you won't freak out if something is wrong with your code and spend all your time thinking "Is it my code, is it the book's screwed up examples, or is the ISP configured in a way that makes these scripts not work?"

If you're on her ISP everything works the way it's supposed to from the book. So the learning experience is much faster.

Take it from someone who has learned everything about computers the hard way and has had no "gurus" available to help. This book packs more in its 200 pages than 99% of all the other 1000+ page books on Perl that litter book store shelves.

I hope Ms. Hamilton publishes a sequel, and possibly books on other internet topics. She is a gifted writer and instructor.

Rating:
Summary: Best Concise Treatment Available
Review: I have spent approx. $500 on Perl/CGI books and I will tell you that this is the best concise treatment available. There is no other book that provides as good an overview without leaving out critical issues, such file locking and security considerations. It remains my most frequently used reference. It is very well written and it does not go into unnecessary details.

My recommendation for anyone considering using Perl/CGI is to start with this book and then to build your library based on your specialized needs (algorithms, pattern matching, exotic data structures, etc). If all you wish to do is some solid Perl programming or to power up a basic web site, this is all you will need.

Do not forget to look at the free preview chapters available at the author's web site. You will also find the code for all the examples there, which I have found myself constantly reusing.

Rating:
Summary: Best Concise Treatment Available
Review: If you are looking to learn Perl/CGI programming from the ground up, this is an excellent intro to the world of Internet programming with Perl.
The book, however, is UNIX-oriented; small chapter on Windows vs. UNIX would be a plus.

Rating:
Summary: Loses values after first 40 pages
Review: The first 40 pages are useful to give you the sense of how CGI functionality is implemented in Perl. However by staying away from the most used standard Perl module for CGI programming (i.e. the CGI module) except for a few pages towards the end, the reader is ill served (because they have to buy a book to get the real work done).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent start-up tool for CGI beginer
Review: This book is best for you if you want to learn and start using CGI right away using Perl. It is easy to read. Concepts are described clearly with hands-on practical examples provided. Chapters are also well organized covering how to write CGI to handle forms, searching, SSI, redirects, cookies, database and e-mail. Essential topics of Perl for web development are all covered. For those who have some programming background, this book can turn you to a Perl/CGI programmer in a single day!

Rating:
Summary: great book for beginners
Review: This is the book which I started to learn CGI from, w/o having any prior programming experience, other than basic HTML. The examples are all up-to-the point, and they all can be tested isntantly; seeing working code, even if it's a hello world program, is very rewarding.

I ended up doing CGI as a part-time job.

Rating:
Summary: Could this book be an BETTER!
Review: Using this book you will need no understanding of UNIX, C, HTML or other programming stuff. The book explains clearly everything you should know. Moreover, it gives you a good introduction to security matters and the UNIX operating system.

The book's scripts are available online; in that site a couple of errata is also pointed out (very simple, but you would like to know).

For Spanish speakers:

Con este libro no es necesario conocer UNIX, C, HTML u otros asuntos de programación. El libro explica claramente lo que se necesita saber. Más aún, ofrece una buena introducción a los asuntos de seguridad y al sistema operativo UNIX.

El código fuente del libro está disponible en el sitio en internet, además de un par de correcciones (errata), muy sencillas pero que convendría atender.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for the HTML coder who needs to learn CGI fast
Review: When I first picked up this book, I was surprised to see that it was only 210 pages. But those pages are filled great information. I learned more from this book that I have from books three times the size. This book has expanded my skills from an HTML coder to a novice Perl programmer in less than a week. If you already understand HTML and a little JavaScript, this book will teach you the basics of Perl and help you create CGI forms and database front-ends very quickly. I hope Hamilton writes "CGI Programming 102."