Web Development with Apache and Perl

davorg writes "In the dim and distant past when I first started doing web development, there was a book that everybody had a copy of. It was called 'How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site' and it was by Lincoln Stein. The reason why everyone owned (and, more importantly, read) it was that it contained a complete high-level snapshot of everything you needed to know in order to run a web site at that time. Unfortunately, after a second edition in 1997 the book hasn't been updated. I suppose that the subject area has grown so much that no-one thought that a complete overview would be too high-level to be useful. They were probably right." davorg's review continues below. Web Development with Apache and Perl author Theo Petersen pages 400 publisher Manning rating 8 reviewer davorg ISBN 1-930110-06-5 summary Good Overview of the State of the Art in Open Source Web Development

I mention Stein's book because that's what this new book reminded me of most (that, by the way, is a huge compliment). Petersen realises that an overview of the whole web development area would be difficult to write (and, ultimately, unhelpful) so he restricts himself to a subset of the available technologies - Perl and Apache - and gives a thorough review of the state of the art of web development in these areas.

But before he gets into the details of Apache and Perl, in chapter 1 Petersen takes a look at the wider world of Open Source Software and in the process presents one of the best arguments I've seen in print for why a company should choose Open Source Software. In chapters 2 and 3 he takes the same approach with web servers and scripting languages, giving compelling reasons for choosing Apache and Perl.

Having chosen his architecture, in part 2, Petersen moves on to looking at some common tools for web development. Chapter 4 looks at databases. The two main Open Source Databases (MySQL and PostgreSQL) are compared and MySQL is chosen as the basis for the rest of the examples. Chapter 5 discusses the shortcomings of the standard CGI architecture and introduces mod_perl as an alternative. This is a good introduction to a technology that some people can find hard to get to grips with. Petersen takes us through the use of Apache::Registry before moving on to the complexity and power of mod_perl handlers.

Chapter 6 looks at the importance of security in web applications and discusses in some depth the problems of user authentication and the use of SSL for secure data transmission. Chapter 7 looks at ways to separate content from presentation. First we look briefly at server-side includes, but the majority of the chapter is taken up with a review of the various templating systems that are available for Perl. The chapter finishes with a detailed look at two of the most popular templating solutions - HTML::Mason and Template Toolkit.

Part 3 of the book looks at three different types of web site in great detail. In each case Petersen uses the examples to take a brief survey of a number of the existing tools. For example chapter 9 looks at a community web site and contains information about a number of web-based forums and chat rooms. It also takes an extended look at Slashcode the software that runs Slashdot. Chapter 9 takes a similar approach for intranet sites and Chapter 10 for online stores.

In part 4 we take a longer term view of a web site. Chapter 11 looks at content management systems and chapter 12 lookat at performance tuning. Both of these chapters are full of useful advice on how to make running a web server as painless as possible.

I think this is a very useful book to have on your bookshelf. Anyone who is developing web applications using Apache and Perl will find something useful in the book. It should be obvious that in order for a single book to cover so much ground, sometimes there isn't quite as much technical detail as you might like, but there is a good bibliography that will show you where to go for more information. In my opinion the high-level approach makes the book particularly useful for a couple of groups of potential readers. Firstly I think it makes a great introduction to the subject for someone coming to Apache and Perl for the first time. Secondly (and perhaps most importantly) I can see the book (in particular the first three chapters) being very useful reading material for a manager who is making a decision between using Open Source Software or some proprietary technology.

You can purchase Web Development with Apache and Perl from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

OSS and Dev in Perl and Apache

[Delrin]

I really find it hard to believe that Perl with apache could be the best example for why OSS works! These are hardly the best example of what they can do for a person or corporation. When the possibilities are endless, how does Perl fall into the fold?

Web Development and the Federal Government

[Blind Linux]

Unfortunately, after a second edition in 1997 the book hasn't been updated.
And yet, it's still being used in the Department of Foreign Affairs as need-to-know material for our intranet site developers.
However, most of the n00bs here seem to read PHP and MySQL web development, by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.
The Canadian government uses Java, XML, VB/VBA, SQL Server, and ASP, but SQL and PHP are the primary ones.
I did ask around at web development and we did in fact order copies of the new book that you reviewed though. Cool, eh?

Re:Not necessarily true

[lindner]

Check out the "hello world" benchmarks at www.chamas.com. mod_perl is right at the top of the heap when it comes to performance (after a C-based apache module) then java, THEN php.

From the site:

Welcome to the Hello World! benchmarks. This site seeks to give its visitors a sense of web application execution speed on various software platforms running under the Apache web server. ...... The benchmarks instead tend to be written for a lowest common denominator so more web applications can compete than not.

Re:Isn't it time web development moved on?

[FyRE666]

Why should I have to sit down and read through PHP stuff when I already know perl?

You know, I thought exactly the same thing - I've written a LOT of perl-driven sites over the years and always considered PHP a sort of "perl for dummies" until I actually decided to use it.

Maybe the earlier versions were bad (you can see by the fact the language still has a lot of ugly constructs that it's evolving all the time), but it really is excellent for putting a dynamic site together very quickly. The huge amount of convenience functions just save so much time (yeah, ok you could have a massive library of Perl objects and functions you coud pull in to every script, but it's not going to be as fast).
Then there's the fact a designer can work on the same files as a coder without having to use templates.

It's fast too! No, not C/C++ fast, but I certainly haven't noticed any database driven sites being held back by it - and freedom from /cgi-bin/ is nice.

Of course, for command-line tools I still use Perl.