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Perl for Web Site Management
In his preface, Callender describes his own transition from a writer and editor to the kind of one-man-band that, back in the '90's, we called a "webmaster". He characterizes himself and others in the same boat as "accidental programmers", and justly praises Larry Wall for creating a programming language that enables such novice coders to do useful things right away. "Like natural languages, one of the ways in which Perl makes easy things easy is that it is designed to let you get by using only a small subset of the language. As Larry puts it, Perl lets you talk baby talk, and in Perl such baby talk is officially okay."
For non-programmers, this is a better Learning Perl than Learning Perl. The latter title, by Schwartz and Phoenix, is explicitly intended for established programmers seeking to add Perl to their existing tool belt of languages. Perl for Web Site Management is for the folks Apple used to call "the rest of us". Callender assumes no knowledge on the part of his reader beyond some familiarity with HTML and the web; this starting-from-zero approach makes the book maximally inclusive, while his ability to convey a lot in a small space brings the newbies a long way in the space of a couple chapters. He provides thorough redirection to the standard sources of Perl and Internet lore (the perl* man pages, the standard Perl programming texts, and others).
Virgin programmers, when they're through with Perl for Web Site Management, will find themselves able to make effective use of Perl programs to automate a plethora of tasks, including mass manipulation and modification of a site's files; server log analysis (using Perl's powerful regular expression facility); link checking (using the LWP module); and auto-generating an annotated site map from the <META> tags in the site's HTML files. The latter part of the book introduces server-side web application programming using CGI (examples include coding a site Guestbook and integrating with the SWISH-E site search facility), along with more advanced lore like the CPAN code archive, Perl's object-oriented features, storing user data in DBM databases, and publishing modules for reuse by others. Along the way, the book teaches a respectable amount about UNIX, as well; the main text, as well as the many informative sidebars, contain concise and clear explanations of necessities like stdin/stdout redirection; chmod and file permissions; shell filename globbing; tab completion in bash; network troubleshooting with traceroute; and much more.
Callender's writing style provides the right mix of hand-holding, humor, and clarity for the book's target audience. He simplifies without dumbing down, and he proves that he picked up a considerable amount of hacker culture on his own journey up the learning curve, which he shares with his pupils, citing sources from Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line to Jon Udell's Practical Internet Groupware. He also does a good job of evangelizing the culture of sharing and open systems that created Perl, Apache, and the Internet as we know it, giving abundant proper credit to the authors and creators of all the tools and references to which he refers his readers. He concludes by listing, and providing jumping-off points for, the wide variety of logical "next steps" that go beyond the scope of the book: Python and other programming languages for the web, Apache configuration, mod_perl, system administration, and relational database integration.
As you may have guessed by now, I recommend this book highly, especially for anyone who finds him- or herself with responsibility for maintaining a web site but feeling a bit underequipped to do so. The book has a limitation (which is not the same as a shortcoming): it's a tutorial, not a reference work; though the index is quite serviceable, this isn't the book to turn to when you need to remember the order of the arguments to substr. This is a book to sit down and read through, once or multiple times, to help build a framework of knowledge and begin populating it with pearls of wisdom that can be put to immediate use.
Additional information about the book, including code for the examples given, is available on the web at the author's web site, O'Reilly's page for the book, and at the online bookseller site of your choice. Table of Contents:
Preface
1. Getting Your Tools in Order
Open Source Versus Proprietary Software
Evaluating a Hosting Provider
Web Hosting Alternatives
Getting Started with SSH/Telnet
Meet the Unix Shell
Network Troubleshooting
A Suitable Text Editor
2. Getting Started with Perl
Finding Perl on Your System
Creating the "Hello, world!" Script
The Dot Slash Thing
Unix File Permissions
Running (and Debugging) the Script
Perl Documentation
Perl Variables
A Bit More About Quoting
"Hello, world!" as a CGI Script
3. Running a Form-to-Email Gateway
Checking for CGI.pm
Creating the HTML Form
The <FORM> Tag's ACTION Attribute
The mail_form.cgi Script
Warnings via Perl's -w Switch
The Configuration Section
Invoking CGI.pm
foreach Loops
if Statements
Filehandles and Piped Output
die Statements
Outputting the Message
Testing the Script
4. Power Editing with Perl
Being Careful
Renaming Files
Modifying HREF Attributes
Writing the Modified Files Back to Disk
5. Parsing Text Files
The "Dirty Data" Problem
Required Features
Obtaining the Data
Parsing the Data
Outputting Sample Data
Making the Script Smarter
Parsing the Category File
Testing the Script Again
6. Generating HTML
The Modified make_exhibit.plx Script
Changes to &parse_exhibitor
Adding Categories to the Company Listings
Creating Directories
Generating the HTML Pages
Generating the Top-level Page
7. Regular Expressions Demystified
Delimiters
Trailing Modifiers
The Search Pattern
Taking It for a Spin
Thinking Like a Computer
8. Parsing Web Access Logs
Log File Structure
Converting IP Addresses
The Log-Analysis Script
Different Log File Formats
Storing the Data
The "Visit" Data Structure
9. Date Arithmetic
Date/Time Conversions
Using the Time::Local Module
Caching Date Conversions
Scoping via Anonymous Blocks
Using a BEGIN Block
10. Generating a Web Access Report
The &new_visit and &add_to_visit Subroutines
Generating the Report
Showing the Details of Each Visit
Reporting the Most Popular Pages
Fancier Sorting
Mailing the Report
Using cron
11. Link Checking
Maintaining Links
Finding Files with File::Find
Looking for Links
Extracting
Putting It All Together
Using CPAN
Checking Remote Links
A Proper Link Checker
12. Running a CGI Guestbook
The Guestbook Script
Taint Mode
Guestbook Preliminaries
Untainting with Backreferences
File Locking
Guestbook File Permissions
13. Running a CGI Search Tool
Downloading and Compiling SWISH-E
Indexing with SWISH-E
Running SWISH-E from the Command Line
Running SWISH-E via a CGI Script
14. Using HTML Templates
Using Templates
Reading Fillings Back In
Rewriting an Entire Site
15. Generating Links
The Docbase Concept
The CyberFair Site's Architecture
The Script's Data Structure
Using Data::Dumper
Creating Anonymous Hashes and Arrays
Automatically Generating Links
Inserting the Links
16. Writing Perl Modules
A Simple Module Template
Installing the Module
The Cyberfair::Page Module
17. Adding Pages via CGI Script
Why Add Pages with a CGI Script?
A Script for Creating HTML Documents
Controlling a Multistage CGI Script
Using Parameterized Links
Building a Form
Posting Pages from the CGI Script
Running External Commands with system and Backticks
Race Conditions
File Locking
Adding Link Checking
18. Monitoring Search Engine Positioning
Installing WWW::Search
A Single-Search Results Tool
A Multisearch Results Tool
The map Function
19. Keeping Track of Users
Stateless Transactions
Identifying Individual Users
Basic Authentication
Automating User Registration
Storing Data on the Server
The Register Script
The Verification Script
20. Storing Data in DBM Files
Data Storage Options
The tie Function
A DBM Example Script
Blocking Versus Nonblocking Behavior
Storing Multilevel Data in DBM Files
An MLDBM-Using Registration Script
An MLDBM-Using Verification Script
21. Where to Go Next
Unix System Administration
Programming
Apache Server Administration and mod_perl
Relational Databases
Advocacy
Index
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Please, speak not in this fashion of things with which you have no experience. Access to a database with Perl DBI is also very easy.
... I really have no idea what you might mean by that .. PHP can't (yet) compete with CPAN.
PHP is nice n'all, but it BEGS to be embedded in HTML (tho' templating modules are available, I know), and as to your "functionality" claim
Try this thread
UNIX/Linux Consulting
There is also the book "Elements of Programming with Perl" which has generally been well received. It is not a web-specific book, and assumes no previous programming knowledge.
I did not deny that you can create templates in PHP, and do so effectively; it's just that the very nature of the language tends to encourage beginners, at whom the book is targetted to mix up their code and their presentation. It's wicked easy to create PHP pages that are essentially souped-up, DB backed server-side include pages that are hard to maintain. If you plan ahead and create templates, well then you're doing well, but your code starts looking a *lot* like Perl templating code.
Don't get me wrong, I *like* PHP, but the original post speaks of much ignorance of the strengths of Perl.
Sure, off-the-shelf products may be great for basic cookie-cutter style websites, but learning how to program everything yourself is much more useful.
Different tools for different jobs.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
When you finish this one pick up:
MySQL and Perl for the Web
Paul DuBois
New Riders
It is an exellent book.
This
The idea that tools like WebObjects will let you instantly build sites is a myth. Learning enough WebObjects to do anything even a little bit different from their sample applications will take you much more than a week, since it will involve learning Java (or Objective C), SQL, an object/relational mapping system, a suite of development tools, and a development framework that has been expanding for years. Most people want to do something relatively simple on their sites, and can get there a lot faster using a little perl code. Then there's the fact that many sites are hosted on shared web servers that allow CGI but do not allow things like WebObjects.
People who have equivalent knowledge in perl to what it would take to run WebObjects know that nearly everything they need is available for free from CPAN. There's no need to shell out a bunch of money for this stuff.