My copy of "Learning Perl" has stuff about CGI, in chapter 19. It's an old edition, but still.

Here's a really quick lesson on how to do web pages with Perl:

  1. First, understand HTML
  2. Write a perl script which outputs HTML
  3. Put print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; before any other output.
  4. Put it on a web server
  5. chmod it so it's executable
  6. Go to its URL

I'm being a bit facetious, but clearly that point 1. there is something of a big issue.

What you should do, as soon as you've got the absolute basics, like the above, out of the way, is to learn a templating module. I'd recommend HTML::Template, which has never let me down. I've wondered if I might outgrow it and need to use another module, but every time I've wanted to do something, it's been there in the documentation. And of course you'll need to understand the basics of CGI.pm as well.

The normal progression of someone doing web pages with perl is "lots of crappy print statements; lots of crappy HEREDOCs; use of a templating module." -- do yourself a favour and skip/spend as little time as possible on, those first two.


Nobody says perl looks like line-noise any more
kids today don't know what line-noise IS ...

In reply to Re: newbie and perl/web development by Cody Pendant
in thread newbie and perl/web development by neutron

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.