HTML 5 and Perl N00b question...

bobg2011 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Guys,

I've been working on a small and basic perl application that connects to various network devices , parses the results of commands executed and stores the information in a database. This information is then used to extract information.

At the moment the interface is a simple Perl menu. However recently a few colleagues have been interested in using it and I thought I might build a web interface for them.

I thought I'd have a look at HTML 5 for building a front end to my Perl backend. And this is where I'm looking for advice :)

I'm trying to decide on whether to use something like mojolious OR using a webservice with something like SOAP:lite.

I'm interested in learning and keeping up with the HTML 5 standard whilst at the sametime trying to leverage some of my existing perl modules I've built. Any suggestions are very much appreciated. cheers.

Comment on HTML 5 and Perl N00b question...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: HTML 5 and Perl Novice question... by chromatic (Archbishop) on Nov 06, 2011 at 23:30 UTC
Unless you have an explicit need to use SOAP, don't. It's complex, weird, buggy, poorly specified, and prone to strange and incomplete implementations. (SOAP::Lite is usually pretty good, but you can only do so much with SOAP.) If you do need web service capabilities, shipping around data in JSON format tends to work much better. Any of the modern Perl 5 web frameworks is worth your time learning. Be sure to take advantage of Plack/PSGI compatibility, but Mojolicious or Dancer or Catalyst should do you well. Mojolicious in particular seems to focus on HTML 5 features, but any of the others will work too. Improve your skills with Modern Perl: the free book.	[reply]
Re: HTML 5 and Perl N00b question... by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Nov 07, 2011 at 00:06 UTC
If your end users are using websocket aware clients then HTML 5 + Mojolicious is a great way to go. Monitoring style stuff could be really wonderful over websockets (and lightweight). There is a fresh example of this kind of thing here: Mojolicious hack of the day: WebSockets (you’ll need a fairly current version of Mojolicious to run it). Note, there is less expertise/doc/tutorial available down this road; e.g., though I recommend it, I’ve barely played with it.	[reply]