I am looking to run a process (for example an instance of python) on a web server. How do I initiate this via http request? For example, a user arrives on my page, I want to initiate a python instance on the web server that can be accessed via ajax requests. For now, I just want to focus on the initiation of the process though.
To be clear, and I failed to make this clear - sorry, I wanted to initiate (using php) a python process on the server and then send execution commands to it. Also, I found an answer: http://php.net/manual/en/function.proc-open.php
Use mod_python on Apache. Stick a Python file in your DocumentRoot. Blammo.. You have Python executing on your web server.
Related
I have been trying to develop web pages locally (in Windows 10) and running in my local browser (chrome, vivaldi). Right now I have 3 different ways to run simple servers locally: php's built in server, python's http.server module, and vscode's LiveServer. When I run the php server, I can execute php code properly, as one would expect. But calling php urls using the other two, I get a "Save File" dialog! Where is that coming from? Instead of a simple "not found" I get the dialog. So I have two questions: (1) Why am I getting the save file dialog? (2) Is it possible to process php files using LiveServer or python's http.server module (which I don't expect can ever support php)
if the save dialog is being shown it's cause the server can't interpret php code. You have to check these servers configs to check their integration with PHP (if they they can do that).
Good questions. Erick has answered the 1st one. I'll just elaborate more on it and then answer the 2nd one.
Why do you get save file dialog?
At a high level, a web server is serving files. When serving HTML/CSS/JS files to the browser, life is easy. Your browser understands HTML/CSS/JS and knows how to render it for the user. If your browser was sent unprocessed PHP file (assuming that file was present), the browser won't know what to do with <?php .. ?> tags and such. So, the browser offers the user to download the file. Same thing with a zip file. If you went to http://someurl.com/abc.zip, if the webserver found that file under the root of someurl.com, it'll send it to the browser and the browser will offer the user to download it. There's more to it than just that.
So, how does a web server process PHP files? It depends on the web server, but the common thing is that they need help in processing PHP files. Web server is configured to send the request to php.exe or some other system such as PHP-FPM, which processes the file and returns back to the web server to send it to the user. Processing of the file converts echo "<div>$variable</div>"; to clean HTML <div>I am awesome</div>. This processing system (php.exe or PHP-FPM) tag team with web server to serve to the browser what it can render.
Is it possible to cross-render languages?
Yes, you can in multiple ways. One of the common ways is to find the best processing system for the language of choice. For example, PHP can be processed with PHP-FPM running as a service. So, http://someurl.com/test/index.php could run through PHP-FPM. Python may use WSGI and you may choose gunicorn to process Python files. In that case, your webserver can be asked to send python-related directories/subdomains directly to gunicorn (essentially a proxy).
Reverse proxy
Let's say you have multiple sites with multiple language needs.
http://py.someurl.com serves Python/Django
http://someurl.com serves straight HTML
http://ph.someurl.com services PHP
http://js.someurl.com is powered by NodeJS
py.someurl.com could run on the server using gunicorn web server (or other wsgi-friendly servers) on port 8000. Node could be serving using Express web server on port 9000.
You could run NGINX server that serves straight HTML and also serves ph.someurl.com by sending requests to PHP-FPM service. It can also be configured to take all requests to js.someurl.com and hand it off to http://localhost:9000 where Node will service the request and send output back to NGINX and NGINX can send the request to the browser. Similarly, requests to py.someurl.com can be sent to localhost:8000 where gunicorn processes the request and sends the request back to NGINX, which forwards the request to the browser.
From a user's perspective, all they know is the NGINX server. All the other things in the background are known to NGINX. NGINX, in that case, serves as a web server and a proxy.
I've written a web socket server that listens to a specific port. In order to run it I log in to EC2 instance with putty and run:
php server.php
I was wondering if this is the only and the right way to do. Normally copy my php files to the host via ftp would be enough, I don't understand why the php command needs to run the server.
Any help is appreciated.
This question is not about any particular coding problem, so is considered off-topic in terms of StackOverflow.
The way PHP works - is just a script file. Same as bash (.sh), python (.py), node.js (.js) or any other similar.
They all in fact have to be executed. In common world, Apache, nginx or any other web server will do execute those scripts for you for each request is made to web server.
As you are creating socket file, you need to create it yourself, as it creates one socket and php script will continue working as long as it will by it self. It is not executed per each request. In fact make sure it is not executed by apache so do not put in usual website directory.
In PHP, is there any way to create, connect and maintain an open (socket)connection so that the connection object can be accessed on several pages?
Imagine a small windows based client program that connects to its server software when you start it. You can send a couple of commands to the server using buttons(lets say start and stop calculation), and receive confirmations on my input.
In this example, when "started", the server will do some counting/calculations and send some values every second to the client which shows this every second until the server is done with its job or you send the "stop" command. The client will also stay connected until you close the program or click some disconnect-button.
How could this client work as a web client running in PHP on the same box as the server software?
I managed to send commands and receive feedback using socket or pfsockopen, but I'm having trouble maintaining the connection since I don't want to reload the page.
I don't want to reload the page every second, so I figured I can use Ajax to execute PHP scripts to read/write to the server without reloading the page, but the script files I execute on the web server can't find my connection resource. I tried saving the resource in session with no luck.
Alternatively, is there any better way of achieving this?
Also: the server software is an old piece of VB6 software, and the web server is on the same box as the VB6 software. The PHP site will work as an interface.
I have application called unistat installed on my pc. I want to pass an argument from a web page and retrieve output from that program.
Is this possible?
How i can connect the website based on PHP to a remote desktop? ask to run .exe file by passing data and send output to specific location?
In order to access your local machine from the remote server, you're going to have to open up your router configuration settings and port forward all incoming port 80 traffic to your local web server's IP.
On your local machine, install PHP and set up an endpoint that runs the exec command, calling the .exe you wish to run.
You'd be wise to put this behind an authentication system, as it will be exposed to the www.
On the remote site, just fire a request off to the local machine's endpoint and the exec command will be run. Of course, if you have a dynamic IP, it's going to require constant maintenance.
See the following link about setting up custom protocols on Windows:
https://support.shotgunsoftware.com/entries/86754-launching-external-applications-using-custom-protocols-rock-instead-of-http
The idea would be that your web site could direct the browser to a special URL, i.e. unistat://my-data-goes-here and the application would be triggered with this data.
edit: better, MSDN link on the subject. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/aa767914(v=vs.85).aspx
edit2: Just realized you want to pipe the output from the EXE back to the webserver.... You may be better off building a browser extension. That, or writing a wrapper around unistat which can trap the output and submit it to a web service.
I want to write either a perl (CGI) or php script on a server to behave like a proxy server. I want to be able to enter the hostname and port on firefox proxy settings (or IE, chrome, whatever) and then go to a site, and have my webserver forward the request to another server, and forward the response back to the client. This way, I am basically using my server as a proxy server. Is there a perl or php script that can do this? If so, what?
Do not suggest anything along the lines of PHProxy or Glype.
I don't want a server that I go into with my browser and enter a URL to browse. That's a big NO-NO.
The CPAN module HTTP::Proxy implements a simple HTTP proxy server that you can start and run out-of-the-box.