Programming with Perl Modules

Table of Contents

Preface

How to Use This Book

About the Perl Resource Kit

Conventions Used in This Book

Contacting Technical Support

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction to Perl Modules and CPAN

What Are Packages?

So What's in a Name?

Packages and Symbol Tables

Package Constructors and Destructors

Modules

Use Versus Require

Object-Oriented Programming

Method Invocation

The CPAN Architecture

2. Parsing Command-Line Arguments

How Are Command-Line Arguments Extracted?

Controlling Command-Line Arguments Without Options

Using the Getopt Modules

Getopt::Long

3. Manipulating Files and Text

find2perl and the File::Find Module

Parse Filenames with File::Basename

Create/Delete Directories with File::Path

Copy Files and Directories with File::Copy

Manipulate Directory Trees with File::Recurse

File::Tools-A Wrapper for File Modules

Formatting Text with Text::Wrap and Text::Tabs

Uuencoding Files with Convert::UU

4. The Mail and MIME Modules

Send Email with Mail::Mailer

Better Header Control with Mail::Send

Interface to SMTP with Net::SMTP

Read Email with Mail::POP3Client

Mail Helper Modules

Handling MIME Data

The MIME Modules

5. Date and Time

Getting the Date and Time

Date and Time Representation

Converting Dates with Date::Format

Time Zones with Time::Zone

Parsing Dates with Date::Parse

Calendar Calculations with Date::DateCalc

Parse Dates with Date::Manip

6. Building Graphical Interfaces Using Perl/Tk

What Is Perl/Tk?

When or Why Should I Use Perl/Tk?

Introduction to Perl/Tk Primitives

Using the get() Function

Updating Widgets Using Callbacks

Binding Mouse Keys to Handle Events

Tk-Related Reference Materials

7. Graphics and Plotting

The GD Graphics Library and GD.pm

Manipulate Images with PerlMagick

GIFgraph

8. The Database Modules

Database Design Principles

Elements of the Database

The SQL Language and Using the DBI

qdsql: A Quick and Dirty Interactive SQL Client

9. The Net Modules

Domain Information with Net::Whois

Domain Names and Hostnames with Net::Domain

Net::Ping and Network Connectivity

Simple TCP Interaction with Net::Telnet

File Transfers with Net::FTP

FTP Configuration with Net::Netrc

10. News::NNTPClient and News::Newsrc

The NNTP Protocol

Perl and inews

News::NNTPClient and Automating NNTP Commands

News::Newsrc and Your News Configuration File

Integrating News::NNTPClient and News::Newsrc

11. Web Applications with LWP

An Introduction to CGI

CGI.pm and Maintaining State

LWP: A Comprehensive Web Package

Developing a Web Server with LWP

12. Web Server Efficiency

What Is Sfio?

Embedded Perl and mod_perl

13. Contributing to CPAN

The Developer Side of CPAN

Introducing SpeakWord

Creating the Module

Writing Intelligent Modules

Using Named Parameters

Documenting Your Module

The Intelligent SpeakWord

How to Become a CPAN Mirror

14. Examples

A Web-Based Newsreader

A Graphical Mail Reader

A Graphical FTP Client

An Image Viewer

An Image Generator

Index