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

Are books the way forward?

[Aliks]

Don't want to be a troll but no matter how good the book is, surely for material like this, the web itself is the best medium.

A paper book is certainly more portable, and for most people easier on the eye, especially when you read for a long time but . . .

Topical material is quickly out of date

You can't search too easily for the topic or phrase you want

You can't easily look up a reference for a term or concept you don't understand

If a certain paragraph doesn't make sense you can't look for alternative statements of the same concept

Once you've read it there isn't any easy way to look up a particular section when you next need it (the books at home, borrowed by a colleague etc)

Books cost!

Re:Are books the way forward?

[bluGill]

Depends on what you want to do. Online is better when you are at a computer (with net access) and know what you want to know about. Paper is better when you just want to learn something interesting. I have not yet found a good way to skim online documentation and when something catches my eye drill down deep. Scrolling doesn't seem to work that way for some reason. An index is worse, it doesn't tell you if something is useful, so you have to look, which means wait for page loading times. After a few misses you give up.

Both types have their place. I wouldn't want to be without my printer, even though I haven't turned it on in several weeks. There will never be a paperless office because when the problem gets really tough I print out everything, and then (as Fred Brooks said) take to the floor to figgure things out. Don't try to get rid of paper, use both paper and the computer to compliment each other.

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

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Old-school Perl CGI is relatively slow, yes, though an awful lot of that has to do with the quality of the back-end code. But mod_perl is unbelievably fast -- and I say that as someone who makes his living developing and maintaining a database with a Web interface written in PHP, so it's not like I'm prejudiced in Perl's favor. "Serious webmasters" choose whichever tool gets the job done best, and if they're also good programmers, they write good, clean code that executes fast enough that the client doesn't have to care what's driving the site.

That being said (anti-flamebait!) I'm amazed you mentioned ASP, not because of of its flamebait value, but because, um, it sucks. I swear to God, there must be "if(client != "IEWin"){slow_down(); crash_unpredictably();}" in the source somewhere. Even these days, old-school Perl CGI is often the right tool for the job. Unless you're developing 100% for IEWin, IIS, and MS-SQL, ASP never is.

Why Perl

[LinuxParanoid]

When I started web programming 2 years ago and faced the choice between working with Java, Perl and up-n-coming PHP, I looked around and it seemed to me that the people using Perl were doing the most innovative, creative stuff on the web. (Slashdot's "distributed moderation" scheme, which I regard as a quantum improvement over USENET moderation for providing large-traffic yet readable forums was just one example.)

I wanted to do innovative, creative stuff, so I started writing Perl.

No regrets. I don't think that aspect of Perl has been particularly usurped. Nor do I think there's another language which provides a platform for faster time-to-market and feature iteration.

As mentioned elsewhere on this thread, and Java and PHP have their own distinct advantages also.

--LP