Many web applications are implemented in a way that makes developing them painful and repetitive. Catalyst is an open-source Perl-based Model-View-Controller framework that aims to solve this problem by reorganizing your web application to design and implement it in a natural, maintainable, and testable manner, making web development fun, fast, and rewarding.
Everything that your web application needs to do is only written once; you connect to the database in one place, have configuration in one place, etc. Then, you just write actions for each URL that your application needs, without worrying about the database connections or HTML to produce. Catalyst will handle the details so you can worry about writing your application.
Catalyst is designed to be reliable. There are hundreds of production applications and thousands of users. The code is well-tested, and new releases almost always maintain compatibility with applications written for older versions. You don't have to worry about Catalyst breaking your application and slowing down your development. It just works.
Most importantly, Catalyst has a thriving community. You can ask a question on the IRC channel and get a response at almost any time of the day.
This book embodies Catalyst's philosophies of Do It Yourself and Don't Repeat Yourself.
If you use perl, or know perl, and you're not using Catalyst for your web development... you should be. Probably. Its great.
