CGI Programming with Tcl

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an essential technology for the development of interactive Web pages. This rapidly growing field is one of the hottest areas of Internet development, and the Tool Command Language (Tcl) is ideally suited for all aspects of CGI development. Although Perl is currently the most popular language for CGI development, Tcl is an ideal development environment. Tcl's rich set of string manipulation commands and well-defined syntax greatly facilitate the dynamic creation of HTML documents, a key aspect of CGI programming. In addition to raw power, many extensions, such as Expect, make the Tcl environment ideal for complex scripting tasks, such as automating telnet or ftp sites from inside a Web page interface. CGI Programming with Tcl illustrates the many advantages Tcl holds for CGI programmers and demonstrates how to create powerful CGI applications. This book presents a series of increasingly sophisticated applications, beginning with a simple Hello World application and culminating in Web-based interfaces to back-end databases such as Oracle. Through these examples, you will learn Tcl programming essentials and valuable CGI programming techniques.Specific topics covered include: *A complete review of the CGI specification *How to build and process HTML forms *Debugging your CGI programs *Processing form data with CGI programs *Server Side Includes--allows you to embed commands inside your HTML files Accessing databases built entirely with Tcl *Image maps--creating clickable images for navigating links *Magic cookies and the privacy issues surrounding them *Using OraTcl to provide an interface to an Oracle database *Using the Tcl browser plug-in to run code inside your browser *Using Tcl's socket support for building a Web-based client/server chat room An experienced programmer unfamiliar with Tcl can learn the language by reading this must-have reference. Tcl's straightforward syntax and similarity to C make it possible for any programmer to work through the examples. Furthermore, Appendix C provides a Tcl reference. The accompanying CD-ROM contains complete source code for all the examples in the book, as well as a CGI library that makes it easy to generate CGI programs that dynamically produce HTML Web pages. 0201606291B04062001