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 programming; today, although we have ASP, PHP, Java servlets, and ColdFusion (among others), CGI continues to be the most ubiquitous server-side technology on the Web. CGI programs can be written in any programming language, but Perl is by far the most popular language for CGI. Initially developed over a decade ago for text processing, Perl has evolved into a powerful object-oriented language, while retaining its simplicity of use. CGI programmers appreciate Perl's text manipulation features and its CGI.pm module, which gives a well-integrated object-oriented interface to practically all CGI-related tasks. While other languages might be more elegant or more efficient, Perl is still considered the primary language for CGI. CGI Programming with Perl, Second Edition, offers a comprehensive explanation of using CGI to serve dynamic web content. Based on the best-selling CGI Programming on the World Wide Web, this edition has been completely rewritten to demonstrate current techniques available with the CGI.pm module and the latest versions of Perl. The book starts at the beginning, by explaining how CGI works, and then moves swiftly into the subtle details of developing CGI programs. Topics include:

• Incorporating JavaScript for form validation

• Controlling browser caching

• Making CGI scripts secure in Perl

• Working with databases

• Creating simple search engines

• Maintaining state between multiple sessions

• Generating graphics dynamically

• Improving performance of your CGI scripts

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 33 Ratings

A good place to start - 2003-07-23
Reviewer Rating:
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.

Great in it's day - 2006-08-27
Reviewer Rating:
When the first edition came out, it was an atypical O'Reilly book; they were known for publishing guides for working programmers, but this was more of an introduction to a topic instead of a reference.

The problem is that it's not 1998 anymore. The technology this book explains (quite clearly!) really isn't used that much anymore, save by people who already know Perl quite well and want to leverage that skill to simple web scripts.

PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby all come to mind as a few of the modern approaches to the same topic.

After the errata, then what . . . - 2003-09-27
Reviewer Rating:
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!

Write an outline before you start writing a book - 2006-10-22
Reviewer Rating:
Fairly good content, but hideously organized. The book jumps all over the place and really lacks the coherence I've come to expect from O'Reilly books. I used "Learning Perl" to get pretty good with Perl in two weeks. The book on HTML is terrific as well. A good "Learning CGI" book to lead into this one would be nice I think.

Strike one for O'Reilly - 2005-04-14
Reviewer Rating:
I was sorely disappointed that I purchased this book. I own just about every O'Reilly book on Perl there is and I grabbed this one off the shelf based on my past experience with the quality that I had come to expect from them. What a fool I was!

It has nothing new to add and isn't even that well written.

So how bad was it? I'm considering taking it with me the next time I visit my girlfriend (she lives within walking distance from their offices) so I can walk in and hand it back to them in person, hopefully that'll make the point stick!

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