CGI Programming 101: Perl for the World Wide Web

I come from a graphic design background and got into web design about 4 years ago. Most of my programming experience has been with Cold Fusion , JavaScript, and HTML. I wanted to learn Perl because I was tired of the limitations of my knowledge base and the frustrating idiosyncrasies of the Windows NT systems and applications that I was enslaved to. After dozens of other Perl books I stumbled onto Ms. Hamilton's. This is the perfect book for a beginner. She painlessly takes the reader into the very powerful and liberating language of Perl and immediately shows you how to incorporate it into your web designs. She is a fantastic teacher. Her code works and the examples are real world. If you are new to Perl and CGI, not a programmer, know HTML, and are totally confused as to where to start, start with this book and then go on to the O'Reilly book. "Learning Perl, 2nd Edition". I also recommend signing up for an account with Hamilton's web hosting company CGI101.com for the following reason. Her hosting site is very CGI friendly and all the scripts work flawlessly on her system. That way you won't freak out if something is wrong with your code and spend all your time thinking "Is it my code, is it the book's screwed up examples, or is the ISP configured in a way that makes these scripts not work?"If you're on her ISP everything works the way it's supposed to from the book. So the learning experience is much faster.Take it from someone who has learned everything about computers the hard way and has had no "gurus" available to help. This book packs more in its 200 pages than 99% of all the other 1000+ page books on Perl that litter book store shelves.I hope Ms. Hamilton publishes a sequel, and possibly books on other internet topics. She is a gifted writer and instructor.

I found this book to be an extremely helpful reference. If I needed to do something quickly, I knew I could just look it up here. However, if you are looking for a comprehensive Perl tutorial, consider getting the "Learning Perl" O'Reilly book as well. I have found that these two books go well together - CGI 101 when I need a quick reference, and Learning Perl when I actually need to really understand the key elements of the script I'm writing.CGI 101 also offers a great introduction to MySQL database programming. If you're new to MySQL and plan to use it, use CGI 101 as your reference but pick up a copy of "MYSQL" by Paul DuBois as well. With these three books I have created an intranet that uses the Perl DBI to maintain an interactive, database-driven environment with approximately 225 users. It took me about a month. CGI 101 helped me out immensely along the way. 5 stars!

When I first picked up this book, I was surprised to see that it was only 210 pages. But those pages are filled great information. I learned more from this book that I have from books three times the size. This book has expanded my skills from an HTML coder to a novice Perl programmer in less than a week. If you already understand HTML and a little JavaScript, this book will teach you the basics of Perl and help you create CGI forms and database front-ends very quickly. I hope Hamilton writes "CGI Programming 102."

I needed to learn CGI scripting for the web in a hurry and this got me going. It took me from knowing very little about web scripting to having a good understanding and working knowledge of CGI.

I've gone through three or four other Perl books looking for one that would help me actually write the Perl scripts I want for my site. This book is perfect. It presents the concepts simply, but completely. I'm an experienced coder, but not in Perl and too many books either didn't answer my questions or bogged down in unimportant details. I have every confidence that I'll finally be able to write the web apps I've been dreaming of. As a bonus, the companion web site is very helpful (I've actually been waiting for this book ever since I saw the web site).