T he Apple Developer Connection has published a new article showing Mac OS X Server users how to set up Web services with Perl and AppleScript. The article is free to read, and includes detailed instructions and sample code for setting up a Web Services server with Perl, and accessing it with AppleScript through SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). From the introduction for the article:
Prior to Mac OS X, Perl scripters were forced to telnet to a shell prompt on a remote Unix box to get full access to their favorite language. But now, with its BSD underpinnings and a terminal window, Mac OS X has the same version of Perl youid find on any Unix system.
Of course, Appleis own scripting language, AppleScript, has been around for years. And a recent release of the language added the ability to use SOAP services, which makes it a nice complement to Perl.
You canit create a SOAP Web service with AppleScript, but you can have it act as a SOAP Web client and use Perl to create the service. So it becomes a simple matter of passing structured data between Perl and AppleScript, with the Perl service running either on the same machine or remotely.
You can find the full article, which includes a wealth of solid information, at the Apple Developer Connection.