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
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
