Description:
Not a style manual in the tradition of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, CGI Manual of Style is a task-oriented tutorial that introduces you to writing Perl programs for CGI. Its clear explanations and useful code listings are marred only by the fact that there's no CD-ROM--you'll have to type the programs in by hand (a good way to learn the code). The first chapters tell you about the CGI specification, including all the methods and environment variables. But they go well beyond that, teaching you how programs parse CGI information in order to use it and explaining how to invoke a CGI script from an HTML document. You also get a run-down on how to configure a Web server to run CGI programs--a real plus for novice CGI programmers who are just trying to get their Web site to do something. After the introductory chapters, author Robert McDaniel gets right into explanations of how to make Perl and CGI do your bidding. He covers general-purpose forms (including forms that use cookies), hit counters, database front ends, push/pull applications (especially as they apply to introductory "splash" screens), and discussion forums. McDaniel explains each program piece by piece, so you know what's going on. This book is an excellent CGI and Perl tutorial, which includes instructions on how to create popular CGI applications that aren't dumbed down, yet aren't written entirely in geekspeak. If you have some experience in another programming language and need to do something in CGI, or even if you're a complete novice, this book will work for you.
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