Perl for Web Site Management
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

Perl for Web Site Management shows how to write CGI scripts, incorporate search engines, convert multiple text files to HTML, monitor log files, and track visitors to your site. This first installment looks at parsing web access logs and converting IP addresses

Perl for Web Site Management - Part 2
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

This second installment looks at the log-analysis script and different log file formats. Perl for Web Site Management shows how to write CGI scripts, incorporate search engines, convert multiple text files to HTML, monitor log files, and track visitors to your site.

Perl for Web Site Management - Part 3
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

This third and final installment looks at storing the data, the "visit" data structure, and the &store_line subroutine. Perl for Web Site Management shows how to write CGI scripts, incorporate search engines, convert multiple text files to HTML, monitor log files, and track visitors to your site.

Tracking FedEx and UPS Packages Online
Jonathan Eisenzopf

The script in this article will keep your customers on your site and provide self-service package tracking capabilities for Federal Express and/or UPS.

Creating An Index Image
Jonathan Eisenzopf

In this article, we will learn how to use the GD library to create an index image that contains thumbnails of images in a given directory.

Automating Image Manipulation with GD
Jonathan Eisenzopf

In the last article, we learned how to use the the GD library to draw borders, add text, and create thumbnails. In this article, we will learn how to create charts and graphs with the GD::Graph module.

Automating Image Manipulation with GD
Jonathan Eisenzopf

This is the first article in a series that will explore concepts and techniques that can automate many image manipulation tasks. This series will utilize the GD image manipulation library.

Processing Text with Perl Modules
Jonathan Eisenzopf

In the final article of this series on text processing, Jonathan takes a tour through a cornucopia of useful text processing modules that kick the tar out of some of those arduous text processing tasks.

Processing Text with Perl Functions
Jonathan Eisenzopf

In this second article in the series Jonathan explains how to effectively leverage Perl's built-in text handling functions to process CSV files and perform an e-mail merge.

Professional Perl Programming: Part 4
Wrox

This installment covers returning values from subroutines, returning the undefined value, handling context, assignable subroutines, attribute lists, and special attributes. This is the fourth and final installment in this excerpt.

Weaving Magic With Regular Expressions
Jonathan Eisenzopf

This is the first in a series of articles showing how to leverage Perl's extraordinary text manipulation capabilities to save time and effectively manage your Web site.

Professional Perl Programming: Part 3
Wrox

In this third installment we look at prototypes, parameters, and variables, among other things. Both aspiring and experienced Perl programmers will benefit from the expertise in this book.

Professional Perl Programming: Part 2
Wrox

This second installment covers checking for and defining subroutines, passing parameters, lists and hashes, and named parameters. Both aspiring and experienced Perl programmers will benefit from the expertise in this book.

Professional Perl Programming: Part 1
Wrox

Both aspiring and experienced Perl programmers will benefit from the expertise in this book, whether they are looking to develop serious applications, improve their productivity, or simply learn a more powerful and portable replacement for shell scripts. This first installment covers subroutines.

Beginning Perl - 5th Installment
Wrox

Learn about Inline Comments and Modifiers, Grouping without Backreferences, Lookaheads and Lookbehinds in this excerpt of Beginning Perl from Wrox Press.

Beginning Perl - 4th Installment
Wrox

This fourth installment covers working with regexps, substitutions, changing delimiters, and transliterations. This manuscript is Chapter 5 Regular Expressions from the Wrox Press book Beginning Perl.

Beginning Perl - 3rd Installment
Wrox

This manuscript is Chapter 5 Regular Expressions from the Wrox Press book Beginning Perl. This third installment covers quantifiers and their repetition as well as providing examples. This book introduces Perl to those new to programming - although you'll find it easier if you have some basic programming experience.

Beginning Perl - 2nd Installment
Wrox

This manuscript is Chapter 5 Regular Expressions from the Wrox Press book Beginning Perl. This second installment covers character, posix, and unicode classes. This book introduces Perl to those new to programming - although you'll find it easier if you have some basic programming experience.

Beginning Perl - 1st Installment
Wrox

This manuscript is Chapter 5 Regular Expressions from the Wrox Press book Beginning Perl. This book introduces Perl to those new to programming - although you'll find it easier if you have some basic programming experience. This is the first installment.

Introduction to Perl 5
Selena Sol

Suitable for those who already have some familiarity with Perl 4, this tutorial highlights the new features of Perl 5.

The Perl You Need to Know
Aaron Weiss

This article begins a series on using Perl in web development scenarios. To start, we ease in with a general introduction to Perl itself.

Part 2: Using Perl to Interact With Web Pages

Completes our look at Perl fundamentals and then jumps right into using Perl to interact directly with web pages using the CGI module.

Part 3: Maintaining State

This article focuses on techniques for maintaining state across Web pages, thus allowing the Web site to "remember" information across a series of steps.

Part 4: On-the-Fly HTML and Web Templates

This month our focus swings squarely towards HTML output and the use of Web templates in generating Web pages on-the-fly with Perl scripts and the CGI module.

Part 5: Processing and Parsing Web Pages

Last month's exploits featured the use of templates to easily insert dynamic information into pre-structured pages such as the Smallville Gazette. This month we extend this concept, retrieving information from the web which will then be dynamically included in a template-based output page.

Part 6: Dabbling in Live Databases - Microsoft Access

The Perl You Need to Know, Part 6 introduces the use of Perl for live database interaction. Learn how to construct an SQL statement, pass it to your database, and receive the results-- all using Perl.

Part 7: Dabbling in Live Databases - MySQL

The Perl You Need to Know, Part 7 focuses on setting up MySQL and understanding its various management complexities. Learn how to create a MySQL database and populate a table with data.

Part 8: Dabbling in Live Databases - GUFE (goofy): The Generic but Usable Front End

The Perl You Need to Know, Part 8 continues it's focus on MySQL. This month Aaron Weiss gets GUFE ( - goofy - the Generic but Usable Front End) as he shows you how to build a visual front end to a live SQL database.

Part 9: The Millennium Episode -- Time and Date Manipulation

In The Perl You Need to Know, Part 9, Aaron Weiss explains the representation and manipulation of calendar dates in Perl. Learn how Perl treats dates, days, months, hours and minutes.

Part 10: Untangling Lists and Hashes

If you want to blow your mind -- in the totally legal sense -- spend some time working with Perl's list and hash data structures. In The Perl You Need to Know Part 10: Untangling Lists and Hashes, Aaron Weiss explains how to work with Perl's list and hash data structures.

Part 11: A Reference of References

Last month we began building complex data structures in Perl using lists, hashes, and combinations thereof. In doing so, we've flirted with the subject of references. This month our flirtation blooms into intimacy, as we cuddle up to Perl's references to help us build and manipulate complex data structures.

Part 12: Special: Introduction to mod_perl

Mod_perl, the module that makes for a happy but complex marriage between Perl and the Apache web server, can ultimately offer significant performance improvements in Perl-backed web sites.

Part 13: Special: Introduction to mod_perl Part 2

Last month we took a magical journey to the land of mod_perl. In that article, we focused on the exciting relationship between the Apache web server and the mod_perl module, and how this relationship optimizes execution of Perl by reducing forking and caching pre-compiled code within Apache child processes. This month, we shift our attention more towards actual code, and some ways in which your Perl code may need to be adapted to function properly within the environment created by mod_perl.

Part 14: Special: Introduction to mod_perl Part 3

We conclude the mod_perl trilogy with some tricks and sleight-of-hand with which you can squeeze a few extra processor cycles out of your web server -- also known as optimizations. Specifically, we'll look at some ways to take advantage of the mod_perl environment to better optimize usage and, more importantly, re-usage of Perl scripts and database requests.

Part 15: Embedded Perl

Back in the halcyon days of the Perl You Need to Know Part 4, we looked at inserting the output from Perl-based CGI scripts into pre-fabricated template pages. Ah, good times, good times. Now, some 11 Perls You Need to Know later, we're more sophisticated and urbane, thirsting for shaken martinis and intrigued by the promises of embedded scripting languages, made popular by Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) and the open-source PHP. Why embedded? Embedded scripting lets you intermingle powerful programming within HTML documents, streamlining the process of creating dynamic, template-based pages. Perl fiends need not be left out in the cold -- there are several options for embedding Perl into HTML, and we'll look at several today, ultimately focusing on the Apache::ASP module.

Part 16: A Simple Approach to PDF

Adobe's Portable Document Format, or PDF, has become something of a standard for storing and forwarding documents destined for the printed page. Most web-based Perl scripts are built to deliver results in HTML format, aimed at the web browser; in some cases, though, the option to deliver result data in PDF format may be a real boon to visitors of your site. This month we'll look at one rather simple way of bringing PDF capability to your Perl scripts.

Part 17: Personalization Methods Part 1 with a look at Cookies

Search engines have long offered a simple staple of web-based personalization, a drop down menu where you can choose whether to view 10 or 20 or X results per page. Herein lies the bedrock principle behind personalizing techniques: "I, the server, am going to dig up a bunch of data to deliver to you; please tell me how you would like it delivered." In this article Aaron Weiss gives us a beginning look at implementing personalization features on the web.

Part 18: Personalization Methods Part 2: Databases and Cookies

Nowadays, sophisticated web sites let users create accounts, to which information and preferences can be tied. This month we'll begin a personalization architecture that uses both a backend database and cookies to manage user accounts in a flexible manner.

Part 19: Personalization Methods Part 3: Embperl

Every good, or not so good, work of science fiction is a trilogy -- it's an immutable law of nature. Our series on web personalization, back-ends, and Perl is no fiction, and only arguable scientific, but a trilogy indeed. This months installment of The Perl You Need to Know series concludes the Personalization Methods Trilogy with a look at how Embperl eases the burden of tying together the disparate parts of the personalization system.

Part 20: Disk-based data structures (DBM)

In Part 20 of The Perl You Need to Know series, Aaron Weiss looks at several Perl DBM, or database management, solutions which have much less overheard than DBI and are a quick way to store and use Perl data structures to and from disk.

Part 21: Benchmarking Perl

This months installment of The Perl You Need To Know covers the Benchmark module — the handy Perl stopwatch with which we can time, optimize, and slim down on code.

Part 22: Warts and All

As a Perl developer, you benefit from knowing not only the strengths and capabilities of a programming language, but also its limitations. This month we get negative, putting a big mirror up to the camel that is Perl, and taking stock of its lumps.

Part 23: CPAN: a Farmers Market for Perl

This month, we'll look at using the CPAN module to ease module management, including finding and installing modules, especially for users who do not have administrative access to the Perl installation tree itself.

Part 24: Introduction to Object Oriented Perl

This month, we'll take stock of the object orientation syntax, and begin a broader understanding of what working with objects in Perl is really all about.

Part 25: Life Cycles — A Series Ends, A New Perl Is Born

This month Aaron Weiss looks at the development of Perl 6, where it is, how it's gotten there, and where it might be going. This is the final installment in the Perl You Need to Know series.

Using a Flat-file Database in Perl
Jason Shindler

Web developers often need ways of speeding up the development process, without spending thousands of dollars for software. Here's how to build an easy to use database in Perl and access it via a web page.

Introduction to Perl on Windows
Selena Sol and Nikhil Kaul

Although Perl may have been born and raised in the Unix universe, the world's favorite practical extraction and reporting language has had, and has had for some time, an established home on Windows. Learn where to download and how to install and configure Windows based Perl.

Part 2: Writing COM Components in Perl

Part Two of the Introduction to Win32 Perl/COM focuses on introducing you to the concepts of COM and shows the creation of some simple COM components using Perl.

Part 3: Generate the Template

Part Three of Introduction to Perl on Windows takes the simple component and uses the Active State package to actually register your COM component with the Win32 registry so that you can start to use it from any COM-aware program.

CGI

CGI: The Common Gateway Interface for Server-side Processing
Alan Richmond

CGI allows someone visiting your Web site to run a program on your machine that performs a specified task.