She then finds some common mistakes in numerous documents, and runs another program to automatically fix them. She runs a program to verify all documents at the site and report the results. A system administrator would like to verify that all hyperlinks and image references are valid at her site.Since the document is urgent, he configures the program to contact him if the document is not delivered by the next morning. He enters the FedEx airbill tracking number into a program that notifies him of events as the FedEx server reports them. An urgent document is sent out via Federal Express, and the sender wants to know the status of the document the moment it becomes available.For example, the following scenarios are all possible: The answer is that by writing your own client programs, you can leap beyond the preprogrammed functionality of a browser. With the proliferation of available web browsers, you might wonder why you would want to write your own client program.
AN EXAMPLE OF A WEB BROWSER PROGRAM IS SOFTWARE
This book is for people who want to do something that available web software won't let them do. But this book is not for the average web user. Most web users never think about HTTP, just as most TV viewers don't think about how video images get from the studio to their home. The Web is about distributing information over the Internet, and HTTP is the protocol used to do so. HTTP is behind every request for a web document or graphic, every click of a hypertext link, and every submission of a form. With every web transaction, HTTP is invoked. Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the protocol behind the World Wide Web. So what does Web client programming mean, and what do you need to learn to do it?Ī web client is an application that communicates with a web server, using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). This book is out of print, but it has been made available Web Client Programming with Perl Automating Tasks on the Web Web Client Programming with Perl: Chapter 1: Introduction