Where can I find some tutorial on CGI?

[kourosh]

hi, I want to start learning CGI language but I have no clue what is a good book to buy! If anybody knows of any good book or web site that I can take some tutorial I appreciate it.

[Michael Bray]

Perl and CGI for the world wide web by Elizabeth someone... its a Visual Quickstart guide and is very easy to use. If you are more advanced go for an O'Reillys book which goes into more detail.

[jwilde1]

Check out http://www.cgi101.com. I ran across a book called CGI 101 and it listed the above url in the back of the book. The seemed thin but as I was going through it I saw it addressed the questions I had that the OReily book I had didn't cover. The CGI 101 book only covers Unix servers though.

also http://www.perl.com

[kourosh]

Hi, thanks for the help, I went to the O'Reilly web site and I find their book list, although there are alot of them.
Let me tell you my situation and then maybe you'll be able to help me more. I am going to creat a web site in the summer for my self, which can act as a message board or a way to communicate with me through message boards. I have find some toturial online but they only cover Unix servers and I am not sure what that means! I am running windows 98 but not a Unix! Also I wanted to know what kind of compiler do I need for writing CGI/Perl? I appreciate if someone answer these questions.

[jwilde1]

kourosh,

Those are big questions. If you just want a message board there are plenty of free ones out there.

If you really need to write something just for your needs then you are in for a bit of a learning curve. Your Common Gateway Interface (CGI) program will reside on a server. That server will probably be running Windows NT or some Unix variant. CGI is not a programming language. You can use any programming language that is installed on the web server. That includes C/C++, PERL, Java, Python etc.
Typically the cost for renting space on a server, where your program(s) will run, is cheaper on a Unix server because the OS is usually free. I have an OReily book called Programming the World Wide Web. This is one of the best books I've seen, but it is out of print.

Check out http://www.addr.com for a possible web host and also the http://www.cgi101.com site I mentioned previously.