Learning website development using Dancer

A hands-on training session at LPW 2011 to develop a website with dynamic content.

From doing the exercises you will:

• learn to use the Dancer framework
• learn to use Template Toolkit
• understand the concept of Model-View-Controller
• experience structuring code for maintainability
• experience using object oriented Perl modules

What's Dancer?

Dancer is a micro 'web framework' - a toolkit for developing a dynamic web application. It is inspired by the Ruby framework, Sinatra.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of:

• Perl (no need for OO Perl)
• Bash/Linux command line interface
• HTML/HTTP
• A text editor like vi/emacs/pico

Preparation

• Bring a laptop with an ssh client (e.g. PuTTY or MINGW/MSYS if it's Windows)

Getting Started

• Login to lpw.illywhacker.net as per the printout received on arrival
• Checkout the learning materials

git clone git://github.com/andrewsolomon/training.dancer.lpw.2011.git

• When you've done an exercise, view the result at http://lpw.illywhacker.net:[Your Port Number]

Instructions

Do your exercises in the directories

training.dancer.lpw.2011/exercises/part1/ex1 
training.dancer.lpw.2011/exercises/part1/ex2
...

and if you get stuck, you'll find solutions in

training.dancer.lpw.2011/solutions/part1/ex1 
training.dancer.lpw.2011/solutions/part1/ex2
...

Paths to take

The lesson is divided into two sections:

• Part 1: https://github.com/andrewsolomon/training.dancer.lpw.2011/blob/master/slides/part1.md

This provides you with the basic toolkit of skills for implementing a web site.

• Part 2: https://github.com/andrewsolomon/training.dancer.lpw.2011/blob/master/slides/part2.md

This is where the interface to the search engine is implemented. If you just want to cut to the chase, you can skip some of the exercises as follows:

Quick (and Dirty) Dancing

• Part 1: Ex 1 - 4, 6, 8
• Part 2: Ex 1 - 4

Further Reading

• Homepage of Dancer http://perldancer.org/
• Dancer Tutorial http://search.cpan.org/~xsawyerx/Dancer-1.3072/lib/Dancer/Tutorial.pod
• Dancer Plugins http://search.cpan.org/~sukria/Dancer/lib/Dancer/Plugins.pod
• Dancer Advent Calendar 2010 http://advent.perldancer.org/2010