The simple, static hypertext documents that currently dominate the Web canconvey a great deal of information, but eventually their limitations becomeclear. What if you wish to provide dynamic data--information that changes overtime? What if you want to sell products on your Web site and secure paymentinformation from users? Or what if you seek to provide a search facility thatpermits a Web database to be explored? Dynamic resources of this sort areaccomplished through CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programming.

CGI programs can take advantage of any resource available to the servercomputer to generate their output and can also accept input from the userthrough forms. These two basic capabilities have led to a wide variety ofapplications, such as forms processing, generation of inline images and movies,the formatting of data sets based on queries to a database, real-time updatesto Web pages, and more.

CGI Programming in C and Perl shows you how to create theseinteractive, multimedia documents via CGI programming in two practicallanguages: C, which has distinct performance advantages, and Perl, one of themost popular for CGI today. Applications and source code are presented in both languages.

You'll learn how to:

• generate HTML pages and images on the fly
• get CGI access on your ISP's site
• ensure security for your CGI-activated site
• parse form submissions directly
• send e-mail via forms and CGI.