Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks, I am writting a perl script which will support student information as well as attending , leaving , new students .. etc. I am thinking of creating a GUI or a fornt end for the user to use when running the programe . You know like buttons to update student info , inserting new student .. stuff like that. I need your advice on which tools to use when creating the front end or which language somthing that would work easily with my perl script. Is there a module that I can use which make live easy for me. since it is the first time I am providing a front end with my script , I really dont' know what to use. Thanks for the help.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: front end language
by tilly (Archbishop) on Feb 21, 2004 at 01:19 UTC
    If you don't choose Tk, other options include wxPerl, Win32::GUI, and writing a web application so that your browser becomes a GUI.

    Any of these can be justified. I often go the web route since the database that I need to work with is centralized, and I don't want to deal with making sure that each system is set up correctly. But YMMV.

    UPDATE: Switched the words "browser" and "GUI" per BUU noticing that I had them reversed from what I meant.

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Re: front end language
by davido (Cardinal) on Feb 21, 2004 at 05:54 UTC
    For rapid development, easy long-term maintenance, and an already familiar look and feel for end users, consider designing the front end as a CGI application, served from a webserver on your LAN.

    This approach has a lot of advantages:

    • Changes to the front end can be made easily simply by working with the code on the central server.
    • Changes to backend functionality can also be done easily on the central server, rather than on each user's installation of some software. In other words, software updates only have to be installed on the server, rather than on each user's system.
    • Since you control the server, you control the operating environment of the script.
    • Browsers already know how to print to printers, take input (textboxes, etc), render documents (HTML, graphics, and even PDF), and so on. You don't even have to worry about the nuances between Macs, PC's, Unix/Linux vs Win32, etc. Your script runs on the server you control, and is accessed via CGI over the LAN by its users' browsers.

    I'm a fan of getting it up and running quickly, and for that, it's hard to beat an intranet CGI script.


    Dave

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Re: front end language
by DaWolf (Curate) on Feb 21, 2004 at 00:20 UTC
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Re: front end language
by JSchmitz (Canon) on Feb 21, 2004 at 02:02 UTC
    I would suggest Perl/Tk also there is a great book by O'Reilly called Mastering Perl/Tk that has some excellent examples that get you up and running really fast. The dialog boxes and widgets and thangs are pretty easy to wrangle up. Here is the link to the book and I think a lot of the example code can also be found online. Good luck! Mastering Perl/Tk
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Re: front end language
by zentara (Cardinal) on Feb 21, 2004 at 16:55 UTC
    I was just posted a general purpose Tk front-end for just such a purpose. It's at ztkdb

    Feel free to use it for ideas, modify it, or whatever. I'm currently working on an improved version which uses sql, the above one just uses Storable. If you have questions you can contact me.

    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh
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