Perl & CGI For Non-Programmers

Course Overview

The Perl programming language is used to generate CGI scripts that add sophisticated interactivity to online content. Perl allows you to process form data, generate dynamic pages on the fly and validate user information. Perl scripts are used to automatically extract the latest available data from a back-office database ensuring that online information is up to date ¿ vital for time-sensitive data such as news, financial information, prices, stock inventory, etc.

This practical hands-on three day introductory course is designed specifically for those with no previous programming or coding experience although an understanding of the basics of HTML is required. The course will give you the programming skills to make your site more responsive to your site visitors' needs and requirements. This course can be taken as two days of individual tuition if you are already an experienced programmer - please call for details.
Course content

DAY ONE

Introduction
· What is scripting?
· Client side programming languages
· Server side programming languages
· Perl, HTML and JavaScript
· Working with forms
· Tags, attributes and values

Programming basics
· Basic requirements
· Uploading files using FTP
· Unix commands
· Script syntax
· Setting Mime type
· Setting permissions on files

Perl building blocks
· Why Perl and CGI?
· Perl and HTML
· Common mistakes
· Basic rules
· Creating browser output
· Documenting your script
· Shebang line
· Here-doc syntax
· Debugging a script
· Operations and functions
· Servers and directories
· Using form methods POST and GET

DAY TWO

· Introduction to variables
· Scalars, arrays, hashes
· Environment variables
· Subroutines and functions

Environmental variables
· HTTP REFERER
· HTTP USER AGENT
· QUERY STRING
· REQUEST METHOD
· SERVER NAME
· HTTP COOKIE

Working with scalars
· Mathematical operators
· Incrementing
· Connecting strings
· Repeating string
· Understanding arrays
· Looping
· Getting local time
· Getting Array length
· Sorting arrays
· Shift and unshift

Subroutines
· Simple subroutines
· Subroutines and input
· Using the subroutine return value
· External subroutines
· Calling external subroutines

DAY THREE

Hashes
· Getting the pairs
· Using the key
· Replacing a key
· Removing key value pair

Analysing data
· Finding and replacing
· Introduction to search patterns
· Regular expressions
· Substitute and translate

Cookies
· Setting a cookie
· Setting expiration date
· Cookies and domains
· Reading cookies
· Limitations of cookies

Forms and hidden forms
· Shopping carts
· Saving data to files
· Reading from files
· Displaying data in files

Receiving feedback
· Sending data to sendmail
· Posting data

Server side includes

Practical exercises

Questions and answers