[sf-perl] Browser front ends to perl back ends

[David Fetter]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 08:03:30AM -0800, David Alban wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I'm a command line person.  I use things like X Windows and screen so
> that I can get more command lines.  The tools I have written over the
> years are command line tools.  My users have been command line people.
> 
> Now I'm in a situation where half my users are command line oriented,
> and half don't use it at all, and are not likely to start.  I need to
> write tools that cause and/or foster building of java code and cause
> and/or foster the deployment of code and build artifacts from a source
> code repository to different environments (dev, qa, production
> equivalent, production).  I plan to write command line perl tools.
> Command line perl tools that can be called from web front ends.  That
> way the same set of tools can be used both by command line folks and
> by gui-only folks.
> 
> I have no experience in developing browser-used thingamabobs.  I've
> written html, sure, but only for basic web pages.  No moving parts
> (well, O.K., one animated gif :-).
> 
> My requirements for a front end are simple:
> 
>   * it has to be something which can run from a browser (say, IE or firefox)
>   * it has to be able to call command line perl programs
> 
> Nice-to-haves would be:
> 
>   * doesn't take too long to learn (my current plans don't include
> becoming a web developer).  the front end is for internal use only, it
> doesn't have to have bells, whistles or sex appeal, it just needs to
> work well
>   * should be as platform-independent as possible
> 
> Is CGI the way to go for this?  Is PHP?  Is <something else
> altogether>?  I realize that asking this on a perl list is bound to
> tip the scale in favor of CGI,

You're more likely to get recommendations for FastCGI or mod_perl
here.  You can use CGI.pm and cousins in any case :)

> but I wanted to ask anyway, figuring a significant number of folks
> might be able to give good advice on the subject.

> 
> Thanks,
> David
> 
> P.S.  I'm not considering perl/tk because I want the tools to be
> operable from any web browser on the local network.  Plus, most of
> the windows users won't have an X server running.

I seem to recall that Tk can be made to run on Windows, but the last
time I tried programming Tk in perl, I got scars on my frontal lobes.

Cheers,
D
> -- 
> Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
> _______________________________________________
> SanFrancisco-pm mailing list
> SanFrancisco-pm at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/sanfrancisco-pm

-- 
David Fetter <david at fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

Remember to vote!