Introduction

CGI, or Common Gateway Interface, is the standard programming interface between Web servers and external programs. It is one of the most exciting and fun areas of programming today. The CGI standard lets Web browsers pass information to programs written in any language. If you want to create a lightning-fast search engine, then your CGI program will most likely be written in C or C++. However, most other applications can use Perl.

Prerequisties

• An understanding of standard HTML tags will be of benefit to a student.
• A student does not need any previous experience of Perl or JavaScript.

Course Content

1. Introduction

• History
• Introduction to CGI
• Alternative Technologies
• Web Server Configuration

2. The Hypertext Transport Protocol

• URLs
• HTTP
• Browser Requests
• Server Responses
• Proxies
• Content Negotiation
• Summary

3. The Common Gateway Interface

• The CGI Environment
• Environment Variables
• CGI Output
• Examples

4. Forms and CGI

• Sending Data to the Server
• Form Tags
• Decoding Form Input

5. CGI.pm

• Overview
• Handling Input with CGI.pm
• Generating Output with CGI.pm
• Alternatives for Generating Output
• Handling Errors

6. HTML Templates

• Reasons for Using Templates
• Server Side Includes
• HTML::Template
• Embperl
• Mason

7. JavaScript

• Background
• Forms
• Data Exchange
• Bookmarklets

8. Security

• The Importance of Web Security
• Handling User Input
• Encryption
• Perl’s Taint Mode
• Data Storage
• Summary

9. Sending Email

• Security
• Email Addresses
• Structure of Internet Email
• sendmail
• mailx and mail
• Perl Mailers
• procmail

10. Data Persistence

• Text Files
• DBM Files
• Introduction to SQL
• DBI

11. Maintaining State

• Query Strings and Extra Path Information
• Hidden Fields
• Client-Side Cookies

12. Searching the Web Server

• Searching One by One
• Searching One by One, Take Two
• Inverted Index Search

13. Creating Graphics on the Fly

• File Formats
• Outputting Image Data
• Generating PNGs with GD
• Additional GD Modules
• PerlMagick

14. Middleware and XML

• Communicating with Other Servers
• An Introduction to XML
• Document Type Definition
• Writing an XML Parser
• CGI Gateway to XML Middleware

15. Debugging CGI Applications

• Common Errors
• Perl Coding Techniques
• Debugging Tools

16. Guidelines for Better CGI Applications

• Architectural Guidelines
• Coding Guidelines

17. Efficiency and Optimization

• Basic Perl Tips, Top Ten
• FastCGI
• mod_perl