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 <ichu...@gmail.com> 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 >
