Cgi
CGI Programming with Perl
Format: Paperback
Author: Gunther Birznieks
ReleaseDate: 15 January, 2000
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:
Strike one for O'Reilly 
I own just about every O'Reilly book on Perl there is and I grabbed this one off the shelf based on my past experience with the quality that I had come to expect from them. I was sorely disappointed that I purchased this book. What a fool I was!
It has nothing new to add and isn't even that well written.
So how bad was it? I'm considering taking it with me the next time I visit my girlfriend (she lives within walking distance from their offices) so I can walk in and hand it back to them in person, hopefully that'll make the point stick!.
After the errata, then what . . . 
The script is an attempt to use the Perl DBI along with the DBD::CSV modules (utilizing SQL statements) to explain the database role in "Data Persistance"! The problem is that the "getQueryResults" subroutine in the script doesn't return any records when searching for particular field values (and returns every record in the database if no values are entered in the "search" form). I've got the July 2000 printing and was amazed at the errata and the errata items yet to be "confirmed"! As an example of the latter, just beyond half-way through the book there's an address book cgi script some 10 pages in length of which only the first page or so is explained. In addition the "doUpdate" module reports that an update has been completed when in reality there has been no change to the database! If you're planning on using the book to learn some CGI with Perl, then you're going to be set back by this and other code malfunctions scattered throughout the book! Even though it's a step up from the CGI Primer Plus for Windows book (and gets a 4 star rating), it still leaves much to be desired for the person who learns by coding!.
A good place to start
It's not. I purchased "CGI Programming with Perl" thinking it was, like many O'Reilly books, a bible of programming how-to for the working programmer. What it is, in fact, is a pretty good introduction to writing CGIs with Perl for someone who has some basic knowledge of Perl and HTTP, but who has never done any CGI programming. And that's just the position I was in when I bought it.
The first third of the book is introductory in nature, with an introduction to how forms and CGI scripts work, some discussion of parsing forms in other languages, and some simple examples. The bulk of the book contains more complex examples of tasks like writing questionaires, interfacing with relational databases, maintaining state, graphics and so forth. I did glean a lot of useful information there. The biggest problem with this book is a problem that's really common to all book on Internet programming: Standards are changing so fast that a year old book is likely to contain chapter upon chapter illustrating obsolete techniques and libraries. In "CGI Programming" there are a lot of examples using Perl modules that haven't really caught on, while some of the newer modules (obviously) aren't meantioned. Another problem is that the book is kind of scattershot in the attention it gives different topics. Still, I think this is one of the better books for someone with basic Perl skills looking to get started with CGIs. There's enough detail here to start writing CGIs, and enough information out there on the web to go on learning.
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