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............... Introduction to CGI
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References to Additional Information
On This Page:
Print Tutorials |
Books |
Online Tutorials |
Programming Libraries
The preceeding was, of course, just a very cursory introduction to CGI.
To become a proficient CGI developer you will need to learn:
- the details of HTML (so you can create valid FORMS, and so your
gateway programs can return valid HTML documents as output);
- the details of the HTTP protocol (so you can return the correct
HTTP headers from your gateway programs)
- the details of CGI protocol (you need to know the names of the
different environment variables passed to the gateway programs; the contents
of the variables, and the encoding schemes used to send client-data
to the gateway program)
- how to write programs. Gateways are commonly written in perl or C,
but you can use just about any programming language.
To help you out, there are lots of useful tutorials, books, and online
resources. The following is a list of some of these resources.
I have prepared a much longer CGI tutorial, in printable PostScript format,
but you will need a postscript printer and some patience -- it is a very
long file (46 pages!). The file is also available in two UNIX compressed
formats: these are much smaller, and much faster to download, but are
of course useless if you can't uncompress them.
4.2 Books On CGI
There are several books that cover CGI programming, including my own
The HTML Sourcebook.
Thomas Boutell maintains, as part of the
World Wide Web F.A.Q., a rather complete list of Web-related books, including
brief descriptions: several other books also cover CGI programming (of course,
you should buy mine first ... ;-) ). The list of books is available at:
http://www.boutell.com/faq/books.htm
If this site is overly busy, you should try one of the F.A.Q. mirrors. A list
of mirrors is found at:
http://www.boutell.com/faq/about.htm
4.3 On-Line CGI Information
Even cheaper than books are online resources. There are several places where
you can find out the details of CGI programming. The following is a very
subjective list of some of the better resources:
- http://www.best.com/~hedlund/cgi-faq/ --
Marc Hedlund' FAQ on CGI programming. This is a nice introduction to CGI. The above URL is no
longer correct -- does anyone know a new URL?
- http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/overview.html -
The CGI specification, and provided by NCSA. This is the detailed, and
complete, description of how CGI works.
- http://www.boutell.com/faq/cgiprob.htm -
Common CGI Problems - from Thomas Boutell's World Wide Web FAQ.
- http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/CGI___Common_Gateway_Interface/ -
The Yahoo collection of CGI resources, with with pointers to CGI
documentation sites, as well as to CGI programming libraries and other
resources.
- news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi -
The Usenet newsgroup devoted to discussions of CGI programming.
- http://www.jmarshall.com/easy/cgi/ --
James Marshall's simple CGI tutorial. Simple to read, and a good introduction.
- http://www.mcp.com/zdpress/features/3970/
-- CGI Manual of Style, by Robert McDaniel -- an online version of a printed book. A bit long
to read, but a fair bit of detail. Slow to access, unfortunately.
- http://www.extropia.com/ --
Selena Sol's collection of CGI programs. An excellent archive collection of useful CGI programs,
although you have to pay for them ;-).
4.4 CGI Programming Libraries
Please look to the references in my book. In the third edition, Chapters 8 and 9 cover
CGI in detail, and the referecnes from these chapters are available online at the following
URLs:
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