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Tutorial 1 - Server Side Counting
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Introduction:
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With the growing popularity of the web has come the need for
more web sites with ever more complicated features. While
it will likely always be possible to put together sites using
Netscape
Composer or
FrontPage
Express, server
side scripting has a large role to play in the development
of more user reactive websites.
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In this, our first tutorial on CGI Programming With Perl,
we'll will introduce the major concepts and walk
through a simple counting program. We welcome all
feedback and
questions and plan on continuing with tutorials
on subjects about web development.
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The Internet is a collection of computers that can
talk to each other; categorized as either clients or
servers. The servers are machines which process requests to
communicate with other machines on the net. With the advent
of the World Wide Web has come
HTML, a language
which makes it simple to put content on the net via a website.
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This content can include links to other websites and
locations on the net. A server machine allows a client to
see the content on websites. In that context the server is
acting as an ISP, or internet service provider. Likewise a
server machine must be used to host a website in order for
that site to be accessible to any client on the web. CGI
programming allows a server to affect the content on a
website. In fact it is possible and not uncommon to have
the HTML code for a webpage be created by a CGI program.
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It is also possible to do programming on the client side.
For instance, newer versions of
Netscape
and
Internet
Explorer provide builtin Javascript
and Java. This means in effect that you can program your
browser, and in either of these languages. The program runs
on your computer, not on the server as a CGI program does.
It also means that a webpage may contain a Javascript or
Java program embedded in the HTML, and a browser that
supports it will read the program and then execute it.
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Perl:
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Perl is reputed to be the most popular programming language
on the internet. It is robust, full bodied, and free. The
language is supported by a world wide network of
volunteers
and exists in versions for many different platforms.
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For the purpose of this tutorial we will be working on a
server running the
Free_BSD
operating system, the
Apache
server, and Perl version 5. You
will need access to Telnet and FTP on your server, a text
editor, and a web browser.
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