Perl for the Web is a book I wrote that was published by New Riders in August 2001. It provides tools and strategies to improve the performance of existing Web applications in Perl. It also provides principles and ideas that help Web programmers create an extensible framework for future growth.

The full text of the book is offered right here. The chapters are stored in an XML form and published to HTML and WML using the techniques from Chapters 16 and 17. There are no figures or images, but all the text is there and code sections are both readable and downloadable.

Sadly, Perl for the Web is no longer in print. You can probably still pick up a remaindered copy for a couple bucks at a used bookstore.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Problems

1. Sources of Unexpected Traffic
2. Budget and Schedules Aren’t Ideal
3. Site Design vs. Application Design
4. Prototypes vs. Live Sites
5. Architecture-Based Performance Loss
6. Often-Overlooked Problems

Part II: The Solutions

7. Perl For the Web
8. Performance Myths
9. The Power of Persistence
10. Tools For Perl Persistence
11. Problems With Persistence
12. Environments For Reducing Development Time
13. Using Templates with Perl Applications
14. Database-Backed Web Sites
15. Testing Site Performance

Part III: Planning For the Future

16. XML And Content Management
17. Publishing XML for the Future
18. XML as a B2B Interface
19. Web Services
20. Scaling a Perl Solution
21. Perl 6 and the Future

Notes

Apache::PSP (mentioned in the book) is available from CPAN. It hasn’t been updated recently, but the code is release-quality.