Updated course notes

course_notes.md

@@ -14,18 +14,102 @@ useful parts of the modern Perl web development toolkit.
 
 In order to do that, you'll need to bring some equipment. Here's a list:
 
-* A laptop. It would be great if you could have a Unix-like operating
+## A Laptop
+
+A laptop. It would be great if you could have a Unix-like operating
 system installed (Linux or OSX). The examples **should** all work on
 Windows, but I can't guarantee it. If you have a Windows laptop, then
-a good workaround is to install something like VirtualBox and set-up
-a Linux VM.
+a good workaround is to install something like VirtualBox and set-up a
+Linux VM. 
+
+## A Database
+
+The application that we write will have a database at its backend.
+I'll be working with MySQL (actually MariaDB(, but if you're happier
+with Postgres or SQLite they should both work fine too. I'll supply
+table definitions and some basic data, but if you're using something
+other than MySQL it's possible that those files will need some light
+editing before you can use them.
+
+## A Web Server or Two
+
+One advantage of modern Perl web applications is that their
+implementation is completely separated from their deployment
+environment. In order to demonstrate that it would be nice if if you
+had a couple of deployment environments installed on you laptop. The
+obvious choice is Apache, which means that we can try out both CGI and
+mod_perl installations.
+
+But the preferred way to deploy modern Perl apps is as a daemon
+process running behind a proxy server. In order to try that, you
+should have nginx installed.
 
-On your laptop. you'll need a version of Perl. One advantage of the
-Unix-like operating systems, is that they will almost certainly come
-with Perl installed. If you're running the examples on Windows, then
-I recommend Strawberry Perl.
+## Git
+
+The code for the example application will be available from Github, so
+you will need Git installed in order to clone the repository.
+
+## Perl
+
+You'll (obviously, I hope!) need a version of Perl. One advantage of
+the Unix-like operating systems, is that they will almost certainly
+come with Perl installed. If you're running the examples on Windows,
+then I recommend Strawberry Perl.
 
 Your version of Perl should be as recent as possible. The most recent
 version is currently is 5.22.1, but anything from 5.10 onwards should
 work. If you want to install a more recent version of Perl than you
 get with your OS, I recommend `perlbrew`.
+
+## Perl Modules
+
+Modern Perl development is largely a case of plumbing together the
+right modules in the right order, so it's highly recommended that you
+get familiar with installing modules.
+
+Many of the modules that we will be using are available from your
+Linux distribution's standard repositories and can therefore be
+installed using `yum`, `apt-get` or whatever similar command you use.
+
+On other operating systems (or if you want more control over the
+installation process) you will need to install the modules manually. I
+recommend using `cpan` to install App::cpanminus and to use `cpanm`
+from then on.
+
+The modules you will need are as follows:
+
+* Plack
+* Dancer2
+* Template
+* Moose
+* MooseX::NonMoose
+* MooseX::MarkAsMethods
+* DateTime
+* DateTime::Format::Strptime
+* DBI
+* DBD::*
+  This is the database driver for the database system that you are
+  using. It will probably be DBD::mysql, DBD::Pg or DBD::SQLite
+* DBIx::Class
+* DBIx::Class::Schema
+* Dancer2::Plugin::DBIC
+* DateTime::Format::MySQL (or ::Pg or ::SQLite)
+
+## Example Code
+
+The example code is available on Github. If you want to look at it
+before the workshop, please feel free, but be aware that it might well
+be updated right up to the last moment as I am tweaking the materials.
+
+The code is at https://github.com/davorg/webdev-workshop/
+
+Please ensure that you have a local checkout of this code before
+arriving at the workshop.
+
+## Other Questions
+
+If you have any other questions, please contact me on:
+
+* dave@perlhacks.com
+* @davorg
+* [Perl Hacks](http://perlhacks.com/) - my Perl blog