Re: Alternatives to CGI perl module

Tom, thanks for your kind words.

I can, and will of course, install CGI myself as all my sites use it and I
have 84,000 lines written using it.

My concern is that it will break at some point going forward if it is not
maintained.

I try to use CGI.pm in ways that are not questionable, such as using it in
object oriented manner without importing its functions into my main
namespace.

Going forward, I think, I should get the message and switch to something
new that will be maintained -- but to what?

On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 7:54 AM, Igor Chudov <[email protected]> wrote:

> I hope that this message would not be considered off topic.
>
> I have been developing web apps since 1996 and have about 84,000 lines of
> perl code implementing various websites that I own. I do not work for
> anybody,  own all websites that I work on, and these sites feed my family.
>
> The largest website is www.algebra.com and I have plenty of other
> websites, some to be used inside my own company, and some niche websites
> like liberatedmanuals.com. All these sites work, and all use the CGI perl
> module.
>
> I always considered the CGI perl module to be a work of a genius. How it
> does forms, prefilling of form values, working with arguments, headers,
> cookies, html generation and so on were outstanding. The criticism of CGI
> as far as importing HTML generating functions in the main namespace is
> valid, but can be answered in a simple way, do not use the functionality if
> you do not like it (which is what I do), and use templates in your own code
> when necessary (as I do).
>
> OK, so now, as of ubuntu 16.04, CGI is considered obsolete and is being
> phased out. I cannot change it. I am literally freaking out for two
> reasons, one is that I have 84,000 lines of code using it, and another is
> that I have hard times finding a suitable alternative.
>
> One concern is that I want any alternatives to be maintained for the next
> 20 years. I can start using something new now if I can find a suitable
> system. I read CGI::Alternatives and I am left with a feeling that none of
> these will survive for 20 years. Second, while templating is important for
> any big consumer facing websites, it is not necessary for intranet and
> niche websites and makes things difficult to maintain. Additionally,
> templating involves more than just HTML templates and sometimes needs to be
> done in perl scripts, using perl functions to generate HTML as part of
> templating, not just HTML files.
>
> So, I am looking for some web app framework that is sensible, has good
> support going forward and lets people use it "the easy way" (without a
> bazillion of files supporting a simple script) or the "hard way" (with
> templates etc). I want a module where HTML can be expressed as a perl
> statement.
>
> Are these any realistically good modules made for people such as myself?
>
> thanks
>