Mason doesn't aim to be the one true Perl-based templating system for building web sites, but it's led many programmers to abandon their custom solutions when they've seen how much easier using Mason can be. It's a powerful, open source, Perl-based web site development and delivery engine, with features that make it an ideal backend for high load sites serving dynamic content. Mason uses a concept called components: a mix of HTML, Perl, and special Mason commands. These components can be entire web pages, or bits of HTML that can be embedded in top-level components. Shared and reusable, these components greatly simplify site maintenance: when you change a shared component, you instantly change all pages that refer to it. Although using Mason isn't difficult, creating a Mason-based site can be tricky. Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason, written by members of Mason's core development team, shows you how to take advantage of Mason's strengths while avoiding the obstacles that inexperienced users may encounter. Mason's unique features, when used properly, can streamline the design of a web site or application. This concise book covers these features from several angles, and includes a study of the authors' sample site where these features are used. Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason shows you how to create large, complex, dynamically driven web sites that look good and are a snap to maintain. You'll learn how to visualize multiple Mason-based solutions to any given problem and select among them. The book covers the latest line of Mason development 1.1x, which has many new features, including line number reporting based on source files, sub-requests, and easier use as a CGI. The only book to cover this important tool, Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason is essential reading for any Perl programmer who wants to simplify web site design. Learn how to use Mason, and you'll spend more time making things work, and less time reinventing the wheel.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Get me to the edge.... - 2002-12-11
Reviewer Rating:
I am using Mason for about a year. Then I saw the Mason book. My first tought was: "Why should I buy a book about Mason - The online documentation is excellent...?".

But even the introduction chapters of this book gives you new ideas how to get things done. Starting with the second half of chapter 4 every Masonsite developer should take a close look. He will find a in deep discussion about every Mason feature - and more (e.g. The Bricolage-CMS-Appendix).

I my opinion there is no discussion "to buy or not to buy" this book. The only question is "when".

On the one hand this book can be a bit boring for "new" Mason user and as mentioned before the online documentation is very good. On the other hand if you have your first mason-site done and read this book you will have very likely the urgent desire to rewrite some code.

But this is a common perl problem: "There are many ways to get things done."

I dislike the "Example" chapter. One of the big advantages of Mason is the possibility to seperate perl-code and HTML. This ist not very well done within the example-site.

Conclusion: This book is not needed to get in touch with Mason althought usefull - but if you are really starting to deploy a site I strongly recommend this book.

Great Book but... - 2002-12-11
Reviewer Rating:
But.. it is a little too short. Not really but I would have loved to have more book. The book covers just about every topic. I personally would have enjoyed to have more examples in each area. They made sure that there is at least on example for each topic. They even give some information about other competing products and about products that use Mason as it's base (for example Bircolage - I think I spelled that correctly). I am really glad the book to come out, it is a perfect addition to my collection of O'Reilly and Perl books.

Thanks for a great book!

Mason review (dave rolsky) - 2005-02-24
Reviewer Rating:
I suppose Dave thinks that this is a fairly advanced topic so he can speak in advanced ways (that unfortunately are of no help).
I am not un-intelligent yet after trying several hours i cannot grasp the concept of passing values from html forms, to my mason program.
Parameters in http requests dont have dollar signs in them dave do they?

Put it simply dave would be my advice to you, this book is painful to read as its explained to me as though i was a computer.

Great book for beginners - 2008-06-27
Reviewer Rating:
This is a good book. I had no idea about mason but helped me get right up to speed. Recommended for anyone who wants to get their foot in the door to learn mason.

thorough and interesting - 2007-08-05
Reviewer Rating:
I've worked on enough PHP and other lousy web code to have cringed when I read the title of this book: Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason. "No!" I cried, "don't cross the streams!" By the end of the book, I was feeling much more at ease (but I still cringe a little at that title).Mason is (though it seems debated) a cross between a lightweight application server and a very lightweight templating system. Requests go into Mason, which dispatches them to handlers and produces a response. The handlers and dispatch are simple but powerful: they use ideas object-oriented programming and allow the programmer to easily abstract and reuse code parts.

It seems like a very powerful system, but its programmer-facing interface is fairly simple. The book walked through all the basic Mason concepts (request, autohandlers, dhandlers, components, methods, etc.) quickly, but with sufficient explanation and demonstration to make everything clear. Chapter 8 walked through the construction of a web and database application, using all the major features covered so far. The features had already been so clearly explained that I felt comfortable just skimming through the chapter.

After that, the book began to cover some more esoteric concepts. Mason is made up of a number of classes: an interpreter, a lexer, a compiler, and a resolver. A programmer can write his own class to implement any of these components, changing the system to suit his whims.At the end of all this, I felt like I could really make Mason do a lot of cool things, and that it was a nice-sized solution for a lot of problems. (I still don't see myself actually /using/ Mason for anything, but now I know it's not so bad, and I know how to use it.) The book was well-written, had the right amount of depth, and was the right length for end-to-end reading. I'm glad I read it.

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