Perl Training: CGI Programming with Perl

CGI Programming with Perl Training Outline

• Introduction
• Introducing Perl and CGI
• Origins of the language
• The difference between Perl and CGI
• The relationship between Perl and HTML
• Understanding the Web browser-Web server relationship
• Installing and configuring Perl for your environment
• Will be customized to Windows, MacOS X, Linux, Solaris, or another operating system based on the attendees' server platform
• Extending Perl's functionality with modules
• The roles of CGI.pm and DBI.pm
• Perl building blocks
• Perl data
• Operations and functions
• Quotation marks
• Quoting without quotes
• Statements, blocks, and scope
• Declaring private variables
• The "shebang" line
• Creating a Perl CGI script
• Creating output for a browser
• Documenting your script
• Checking the script's syntax
• Getting data from visitors (can be accelerated or skipped if attendees are fluently familiar with HTML forms)
• Labeling incoming data
• Creating a form
• Creating:
• Text boxes
• Password fields
• Text areas
• Radio buttons
• Check boxes
• Select lists and menus
• Submit and reset buttons
• Image buttons
• Specifying the action of the form
• Understanding form methods: GET vs. POST
• How your script processes data from a form
• How your script processes data passed via a hyperlink
• Environment variables
• Your visitor's browser and platform
• Viewing available environment variables
• Storing data from environment variables
• Getting data into the script
• Getting single-value form data
• Getting multiple-value form data
• Getting the names of all form elements
• Retrieving values from each of these elements
• Simple operations with scalar variables
• What is a scalar variable?
• Assigning a value to a scalar
• Multiplying, dividing, adding, subtracting
• Using more than one operators
• Raising a number to an exponential power
• Using mathematical functions
• Concatenating (joining) strings
• Repeating a string
• Operating and assigning in one step
• Incrementing or decrementing a variable
• Conditionals and loops
• Comparing numbers
• Comparing strings
• Evaluating conditions without comparisons
• Testing two or more comparisons at a time
• Creating a basic conditional statement
• Adding options for false conditions
• Adding multiple, independent conditions
• Using unless
• Loop structures:
• while and until
• for
• foreach
• Using break to exit a loop
• Using continue to start the next iteration of a loop
• Working with arrays
• Assigning a list to an array variable
• Referring to a particular item in an array
• Referring to multiple items from an array
• Using shift(), unshift(), push(), pop(), and splice() to add, remove, or replace items in an array
• Using sort() and reverse() to change the order of an array
• Using length() to determine how many elements are in the array
• Subroutines
• Why create subroutines?
• Using a simple subroutine
• Creating and calling subroutines
• Processing values passed to a subroutine
• Returning a value from a subroutine
• Storing subroutines in a separate file
• Loading subroutines from a separate file
• Working with hashes
• Why use hashes?
• Assigning a list to a hash
• Getting a value using a key
• Adding or replacing a key-value pair
• Getting several values using keys
• Getting all of a hash's keys
• Getting all of a hash's values
• Getting each key and value in a hash
• Getting pairs in a specified order
• Removing key-value pairs
• Analyzing data and validating form submissions
• Why analyze data?
• In-depth primer on regular expressions, which enable simple or complex patterns to be detected within text strings
• Finding something
• Finding and replacing
• Seeing and using what was found
• Splitting a value into pieces
• Constructing search patterns
• Matching a single character
• Matching a string of characters
• Matching a character from a group
• Matching a character that's not in the group
• Using class shorthands
• Advanced regular expression techniques
• Form validation
• Client-side, server-side, or both?
• Defining validation rules and analyzing submitted data
• Returning messages back to the user about whether their form submission is valid or invalid
• Remembering what visitors tell you
• Overview of strategies for maintaining user information and application state
• Using hidden fields to store and pass data
• Using cookies to store and pass data
• Setting a cookie
• Restricting a cookie by domain and/or path
• Setting the expiration of a cookie
• Requiring the presence of a secure connection
• Retrieving and working with cookie values
• What to do when a user's browser refuses to accept a cookie
• Formatting output
• Formatting output with Perl
• Creating a format pattern for integers
• Creating a format pattern for non-integers
• Creating a pattern for strings
• Changing case
• Changing characters
• Finding the length of a string
• Extracting one string from another
• Cleaning up the end of a string
• Formatting output with HTML
• Overview of CGI.pm's capabilities for automatically-generating HTML
• Generating the HTTP header
• Using start_html() to generate the document head
• Concluding the page with end_html()
• Dynamically generating text and tables of text
• Dynamically generating hyperlinks and images
• Dynamically generating forms
• Styling output with CSS
• Introduction to CGI/Perl security
• Reading the security FAQs
• The problem with visitor input
• Protecting calls to the system
• Limiting access to files
• Using CGI.pm to limit incoming data
• Keeping information to yourself
• Avoiding tainted data
• Cleaning and using outside data
• Files and directories
• Opening a file
• Verifying file and directory operations
• Writing to an external file
• Getting exclusive access to a file
• Reading data from an external file
• Closing a file
• Renaming or removing a file
• Checking a file's status
• Opening, reading from, and closing directories
• Changing the working directory
• Creating a directory
• Changing permissions from within a script
• Removing a directory
• Generating email messages from your scripts
• Routing data from Perl to mail, sendmail, or another application or module that will mail it
• Important security considerations
• Adding file attachments
• Processing file uploads
• Why upload files via HTML forms?
• Setting the enctype and method of the form to facilitate uploads
• Defining one or more file fields in the form
• Controlling where the uploaded file is saved
• Preventing common security issues that can arise when saving uploaded files
• Database connectivity: introducing the DBI module
• Origins of DBI, the database interface module
• DBI architecture
• Overview of available DBDs (database drivers)
• Setting up and configuring DBI and DBDs
• Selecting records from the database via ad hoc queries
• Building a SQL SELECT statement
• Sending the SQL statement to the database for execution
• Displaying a single value returned from the database
• Displaying multiple rows of data returned from the database
• Handling errors that can occur when interacting with the database
• Inserting, updating, and deleting records
• Building SQL INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements
• Building Web-based interfaces for inserting, updating, and deleting database records
• Validating user input
• Prompting the user for confirmation
• Grouping related operations together as transactions so that they either all succeed or all fail
• Invoking stored procedures
• Why use stored procedures instead of ad hoc SQL queries?
• Defining stored procedures
• Invoking stored procedures
• Passing input parameters to stored procedures
• Retrieving output parameters from stored procedures
• Handling in/out parameters
• Finding, downloading, and installing additional Perl modules from CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network)
• Conclusion