Calling Python in PHP

Question:

I have a Python script I recently wrote that I call using the command line with some options. I now want a very thin web interface to call this script locally on my Mac.

I don’t want to go through the minor trouble of installing mod_python or mod_wsgi on my Mac, so I was just going to do a system() or popen() from PHP to call the Python script.

Any better ideas?

Asked By: Benny Wong

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Answers:

Depending on what you are doing, system() or popen() may be perfect. Use system() if the Python script has no output, or if you want the Python script’s output to go directly to the browser. Use popen() if you want to write data to the Python script’s standard input, or read data from the Python script’s standard output in php. popen() will only let you read or write, but not both. If you want both, check out proc_open(), but with two way communication between programs you need to be careful to avoid deadlocks, where each program is waiting for the other to do something.

If you want to pass user supplied data to the Python script, then the big thing to be careful about is command injection. If you aren’t careful, your user could send you data like “; evilcommand ;” and make your program execute arbitrary commands against your will.

escapeshellarg() and escapeshellcmd() can help with this, but personally I like to remove everything that isn’t a known good character, using something like

preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/', '', $str)
Answered By: Andru Luvisi

I do this kind of thing all the time for quick-and-dirty scripts. It’s quite common to have a CGI or PHP script that just uses system/popen to call some external program.

Just be extra careful if your web server is open to the internet at large. Be sure to sanitize your GET/POST input in this case so as to not allow attackers to run arbitrary commands on your machine.

Answered By: Eli Courtwright

You can run a python script via php, and outputs on browser.

Basically you have to call the python script this way:

$command = "python /path/to/python_script.py 2>&1";
$pid = popen( $command,"r");
while( !feof( $pid ) )
{
 echo fread($pid, 256);
 flush();
 ob_flush();
 usleep(100000);
}
pclose($pid);

Note: if you run any time.sleep() in you python code, it will not outputs the results on browser.

For full codes working, visit How to execute python script from php and show output on browser

Answered By: Idealmind

The shell_exec() operator will also allow you to run python scripts using similar syntax to above

In a python file called python.py:

hello = "hello"
world = "world"
print hello + " " + world

In a php file called python.php:

$python = shell_exec(python python.py);
echo $python;
Answered By: user

If you want to execute your Python script in PHP, it’s necessary to do this command in your php script:

exec('your script python.py')
Answered By: Gouled Med

Your call_python_file.php should look like this:

<?php
    $item='Everything is awesome!!';
    $tmp = exec("py.py $item");
    echo $tmp;
?>

This executes the python script and outputs the result to the browser.
While in your python script the (sys.argv[1:]) variable will bring in all your arguments. To display the argv as a string for wherever your php is pulling from so if you want to do a text area:

import sys

list1 = ' '.join(sys.argv[1:])

def main():
  print list1

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()
Answered By: Aze

Note that if you are using a virtual environment (as in shared hosting) then you must adjust your path to python, e.g: /home/user/mypython/bin/python ./cgi-bin/test.py

Answered By: Bob3411

The above methods seems to be complex. Use my method as a reference.

I have this two files

run.php

mkdir.py

Here, I’ve created a html page which contains GO button. Whenever you press this button a new folder will be created in directory whose path you have mentioned.

run.php

<html>
 <body>
  <head>
   <title>
     run
   </title>
  </head>

   <form method="post">

    <input type="submit" value="GO" name="GO">
   </form>
 </body>
</html>

<?php
    if(isset($_POST['GO']))
    {
        shell_exec("python /var/www/html/lab/mkdir.py");
        echo"success";
    }
?>

mkdir.py

#!/usr/bin/env python    
import os    
os.makedirs("thisfolder");
Answered By: SMshrimant

is so easy
You can use [phpy – library for php][1]
php file

<?php
  require_once "vendor/autoload.php";

  use appcoreApp;

  $app = new App();
  $python = $app->python;
  $output = $python->set(your python path)->send(data..)->gen();
  var_dump($ouput);

python file:

import include.library.phpy as phpy
print(phpy.get_data(number of data , first = 1 , two =2 ...))

you can see also example in github page
[1]: https://github.com/Raeen123/phpy

Answered By: Raeen
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