Creating an API for Perl Script

[bradhiggins]

Hey all,

This may sound like an unusual question but please bear with me.

Like other programing languages such as Java you are aple to create a form of API eg a win32 .dll and then allow other applications to call these API functions to interact with your program.

Are you able to do the same using Perl?

I have a client and server script that is written in perl where the client initiates a request of data from the server which does a query on a database and returns the response back to the client script.

What I need is to allow other developers to call the client script from their applications in order to get the return results from the server scripts database query.

Am I making this too hard for myself and I don't need an API? Can a perl script be called easily from a 3rd party program and deal with the data passed back?

Any help would be greatfully appreciated.

Cheers

Brad Higgins

 

[siberian]

If you are using perl for all your programs just write Perl Modules, this is the perl equivelant of a java or c library.

If you are speaking about cross language usage Perl has the same limitations as the language you speak of.

 

[bradhiggins]

Thanks for responding.

I already have the functions I use for this in a Module as I also use the same module for a Web application using CGI.

I think I am asking how do I go about creating an interface that allows a non Perl Language to call my Perl Scripts and/or use my Modules.

Cheers Brad

 

[siberian]

As with other languages you need to either wrap these in some other technology or expose them via another layer.

Usually this layer is a web-services API but other times it is language specific.

For example, C does not directly call Java code but I bet there is some person out there who has written a Java->C wrapper that C can access.

Specifically ,what language do you want to call your perl modules from??

 

[bradhiggins]

Other developers will be trying to use my perl scripts within their applications.

They haven't told me what languages they use but I assume it will be either C++, VB or Delphi.

So I might leave it up to the developers to see if they can create a way to connect to my perl scripts rather then me do the running around for them.

cheers

brad

 

[siberian]

Google is your friend

http://www.bigwebmaster.com/589.html

http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/qna12.10.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=use+perl+in+C&spell=1

You can probably dig around for VB and Delphi but I did not find much on those.