Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C

What You Need to Know to Get the Most out of This Book

This book was designed for application developers who already have some experience with web programming. We assume that you understand CGI scripting, know how to produce HTML pages dynamically, and can create fill-out forms and process their contents. We also assume that you know the basics of web server administration—if not with the Apache server itself, then with another Unix or Microsoft Windows-based web server.

A knowledge of the Perl programming language is definitely required! We use the Perl version of the Apache API to illustrate the central concepts of module design and implementation, and most of our example code is written in Perl as well. We chose to do it this way because we think there are more people who are comfortable developing web applications in Perl than in C or C++. You don't have to be a Perl guru to read this book, but there will be places where you'll find the going tough if you don't understand Perl syntax. We make particularly heavy use of the current features of Perl (Version 5.004 and higher), particularly in regard to Perl's object-oriented syntax. If you know Perl Version 4 but haven't gotten around to reading about the Version 5 features, now's the time to start learning about hash references, blessed objects, and method calls.

If you're an experienced C programmer, you can probably get what you need from the Perl chapters without necessarily understanding every line of the example code. Be ...