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Part 6: Networking
Part 6: Networking
Perl is sometimes called a “glue language” because of its utility for creating connections between things. In this section, 13 articles show how to get some of those things (servers, programs, web sites, languages, telephones, people) talking to one another.
To begin, three articles explore email manipulation with Perl: two by Dan Sugalski on sending mail, and one by Simon Cozens on blocking spam and filtering mail. Jay Rogers then describes his Net::Telnet module, which you can use to automate network sessions, such as when you telnet to another computer. Tim Meadowcroft follows with an article about how to expose a Perl interpreter as a Microsoft COM object, enabling you to control Microsoft Office applications from your Perl program, wherever it might be.
Lincoln D. Stein follows with three articles on networking. His first article, Client-Server Applications, shows you how to create network applications with Perl. In Managing Streaming Audio, Lincoln demonstrates how to use Perl to stream audio over the Internet. Lincoln then demonstrates his networking chops by implementing an Internet telephone in 74 lines of Perl, which he walks through in A 74-Line IP Telephone. Bill Birthisel continues the telephone theme with an article showing how to control modems from Perl programs.
In the next two articles, Graham Barr talks about Net::NNTP and Net::FTP, followed by Gerard Lanois showing how to use Net::FTP to traverse an entire FTP site for mirroring, downloading, searching, and more. Finally, Jon Drukman closes out the section with DNS Updates with Perl, which demonstrates how to use the Net::DNS::Update module to programmatically change how your hostnames (e.g., "http://www.oreilly.com“) are mapped to IP addresses (e.g., “172.17.146.22”)—frequently needed by systems such as load-balancing web servers.
