------------------------------------------------ On 15 Oct 2003 09:03:01 -0500, PD Schloss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi, > > I have a perl script that I would like to make available on-line. I > suspect the target community (microbiologists) has no interest in > getting/learning perl for themselves and would prefer to use it as an > on-line resource. Since I am a newbie at much of this, I was wondering > if someone could direct me where I can learn to do this. > In general if you have some background with Perl then the amount you need to learn to do simple online apps is relatively small. For starters there is a 'CGI' specific list (beginners-cgi) that you may get better help from at times, though your post is not off topic for this list either. Secondly you should check out the CGI.pm base module, as well as the CGI::Application modules. Reading through their documentation, if you are used to POD, should enlighten you a lot. If you are still confused at that point or prefer not to dive right in then there are just about as many books on CGI as microbiology these days ;-) pick one and have at it, there are also a ton of online tutorials, mileage varies... > My plan would be to have people upload a file and execute the script and > be able to have the results (several files) emailed to them when the > script is done running. The script can take awhile to run so it would > be good if the submitter could leave the site while the script is being > executed. I'm sorry if this idea and question seems a bit naive but I'm > not sure how/if I should go about doing this. Any suggestions would be > great. > Sounds like a good start to a plan. You are going to run into a number of issues that people always encounter with CGI design limitations, etc. but for the most part your app is doable. Some things to keep in mind would be whether just anyone can use it, do they need to register/login, is there a queue as it sounds like this is a long running process and it will timeout the browser. So presumably the jobs would be uploaded, shoved into a queue, and then performed in a FIFO manner. If this is the case do you or how do you notify the user that their job is complete. How do they get the results? email? Are you going to keep a job queue number and send them an email with a link that takes them to a page that displays the results for a job? If they submit multiple jobs can they get a list of all of the jobs they have run? (this goes back to the register/not register)... These are just some of the things you will want to think about, and all of that sounds daunting, it doesn't have to be that complicated, so first I would layout exactly how you are expecting things to go. Assuming I am correct about the "batch job" processing, then you should start by improving your current tech to work in that type of manner (aka a queueing type setup) and that will drive what information you then need from/to the web interface. Whether you should write it at all is really up to whether or not it is worth it to you as a personal learning experience, whether or not anyone will use it (if you are the kind of person that prefers everything to have a purpose), whether or not you can utilize it, presumably you have written something that others can use because you would use it, so you should at least have 1 user right? And finally whether or not there is already something out there that does the exact same thing and costs the same amount, don't reinvent the wheel, invent a different one :-)... http://danconia.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
