Writing CGI Applications with Perl

They just start coding without any introduction except for some stupid jokes.

That said, if you already know a buttload of Perl and DBI and CGI programming, you might like this book for the examples.

Also, there were way too many errors in the text and the code, and that makes it even harder to learn.


Not all I expected   November 19, 2003
 3 out of 10 found this review helpful

I read the raving previous reviews and thought this would be the CGI book for me. It wasn't. I know a bit of perl, but relatively little about cgi (I know a bit, but not much). Here are my comments:

Good things:
- I thought most of the example programs in the text were good and illustrated the points being made.
- I liked the discussion on taint

Bad points:
- I thought the examples were somewhat random and did not give me tools to attack general problems.
- I would have liked a better description of cgi.pm (perhaps I should get Lincoln Stein's book)
- I did not like the line by line format of the code. I found this very distracting and redundant. I would have preferred seeing the code and then having the authors describe the main points of the code (instead of all the trivial comments inbetween all the lines).
- I did not like the dependence on databases. Perhaps this is something most serious cgi programmers use, but storing my data in text files is sufficient for most of the applications I might use. I would have preferred a separate chapter on database and cgi (or I could just buy a separate book on this).

I'm not sure why everyone else raved about the book so much, but I didn't find it so wonderful.


Very helpful   April 10, 2003
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is an extremely useful book for writing web-based applications with Perl. Lots of helpful descriptions and examples. Useful for beginners to familiarize themselves with a wide range of necessary terms and topics. For example, I found the chapters on mod_perl and dbi very helpful. Also useful for more experienced CGI programmers because of the useful examples and techniques presented.