Perl server question

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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl server question by PriNet (Monk) on Sep 10, 2012 at 02:51 UTC
You would need to set aside some coding time and lots of coffee.... I'm not sure how you are retrieving the stock information directly, but it would probably be easiest to provide the information to a structured file that could be put on a website either locally or remotely that can be accessed via inet. Getting the information into a usable format would be the trickiest, but publishing the info to a website should be realativly easy, there are some good modules that allow you to send and recieve files over TCP using sockets. Most ISP's provide at least a little web space that you could bury the results page in that could be "scraped" later to get the information. This would probably mean you would need perl at your stock source computer and you laptop so you can proccess the information between the two rather seamlessly. I did try re-inventing the wheel... But it kept getting stuck on the corners	[reply]
Re: Perl server question by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Sep 10, 2012 at 09:15 UTC
As Perl projects go, collecting data from an external source (calling an API to get the quotes, scraping them off a website, whatever) and writing it to a file is pretty damn easy. However, as already mentioned, the fact that you're asking this question in the first place suggests that you have zero or near-zero Perl knowledge, so even a relatively easy project may still be very difficult for you. You also haven't said anything about the source you'd be getting the quotes from, which could add a bit of complexity (both technical and legal - have you verified that their terms of service would permit this?) depending on how that source is set up.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl server question by Anonymous Monk on Sep 10, 2012 at 10:17 UTC
I already wrote the script that succesfully scrapes the quotes, I know how to store these in a file and then i can send that to my laptop and split that possibly or parse that again. I only have no idea in what form I would sent that file directly to my laptop from a server, and how to program a server in generalxD , I will check cpan:) I checked the source and it is legal:)	[reply]
Re^3: Perl server question by CountZero (Bishop) on Sep 10, 2012 at 18:26 UTC
Or store the file somewhere on your "server" where you can retrieve it with FTP. You could even automate the retrieval by writing a little script on your laptop based upon modules such as IO::Ftp. CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James My blog: Imperial Deltronics	[reply]
Re^3: Perl server question by Anonymous Monk on Sep 10, 2012 at 16:36 UTC
Once you've got it on disk, why not simply rsync it to the laptop?	[reply]
Re: Perl server question by zentara (Cardinal) on Sep 10, 2012 at 10:20 UTC
Google for Perl stock to get solutions, such as retrieving stock info from the web or stock retrieval tutorial. Once you get the retrieval done, then it's just a matter of running it on a timer, or as a cron job, then you can display the data by just dumping it into an html table with a CGI script. I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh	[reply]
Re: Perl server question by Anonymous Monk on Sep 10, 2012 at 03:50 UTC
How difficult and time consuming would it be to ... Its one of those things, if you have to ask, then it probably is very difficult taking a long time :) Its also one of those things somebody has already done, maybe :) cpan cpan cpan	[reply]
Re: Perl server question by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Sep 10, 2012 at 12:44 UTC
Is there already a historical archive of the quotes provided by the data source? Then you don't need to handle the storage of the data, extra server, etc yourself. --MidLifeXis	[reply]