Length: 1 Day

OVERVIEW

Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is the technical term for the mechanism by means of which programs are invoked on Web servers in response to mouse clicks on hyperlinks by users of browsers. CGI programs perform such tasks as database updates, product ordering, survey form completion, and so on. They also generate new Web pages – termed dynamic web pages because these pages are created on the fly by the CGI programs. From the user’s perspective, such pages are indistinguishable from hand-written (“static”) ones. But for the owners and builders of web sites, CGI programs open vast new possibilities.
The Web as a platform upon which to build and deploy applications has many advantages:

• It is machine-independent; your software will run identically on PCs, Macintoshes, and workstations.
• It is timely; data and software updates are immediately available.
• It is easy to deploy; there is no software to distribute, since your applications run on a server and the client software is standard.
• It is geographically dispersed; physical proximity is irrelevant since the Web is indeed World Wide.
• It is easy for users to learn because browsers are intuitive and already familiar to many.

YOU WILL LEARN

This course provides the techniques that enable you to gain all these benefits.

The essential goal of the course is the acquisition of real skills. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Process data from HTML forms.
• Generate dynamic Web pages.
• Capture form data in files.
• Send e-mail from Perl scripts.
• Use the CGI.pm Perl module to make CGI scripting easier.
• Debug Perl CGI scripts.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

This course is for Perl programmers who wish to construct interactive web sites.