I have some Python scripts that I run on my desktop now for cutting up files. I want to put them on the web and write a simple front-end in PHP where a user uploads a file and it is passed as an argument to a python script on the web server and it is written out in chunks and the user can re-download the chunks.
I know a decent amount of PHP, but I do not see:
How to mix PHP and Python programmatically
Is it possible to have a webpage in python that can just call the python script? Can one have a GUI page that is like zzz.com/text.py as example
For http requests, you need to set your web server to hand over certain request to PHP and others to Python. From within PHP's scripts, if you need to call some Python executable scripts, use one of PHP's shell functions. e.g. exec()
Yes it is possible. The djangobook is a nice tutorial that covers this in one of the earlier chapters. It shows you how to run python as a cgi or with apache.
On a personal note, if you have time to dig deeper into Python, I'd strongly encourage you to do the whole thing in it, rather than mix things with PHP. My experience tells me that there are probably more cases where a PHP app needs some Python support rather than the reverse.
If the supporting language can do everything that the main language does, what's the point of using the main language?
Related
My LAMP server is CentOS 7.4 with Apache 2.4, PHP 5.4, and Python 3.6.
I am new to Python; I migrated from R to Python just now. I need some Python package to do statistics, and then deliver the output to PHP.
I reviewed lots of similar questions. The answers are around exec(), passthru(), system(), and shell_exec(). They are dangerous commands and should not be enabled in PHP.
In the Python official manual, "Integrating Python With Other Languages", mentioned are only two tools, ppython and PHP "Serialize" in Python.
ppython seemed no longer maintained, but that's what I need, just like Rserve when I use R.
I also read this post:
Simple and standard solution is using Socket or Webservice(API)
Now, how do I run a Python script in PHP without using exec(),system()...(maybe socket communication)?
Everything is dangerous (even a fork) if you don't know how to use it. Well, you have several options:
Standard: Running the Python interpreter in PHP with exec() / shell_exec(), etc. Plus there will be a small latency and ability to run Python compiled byte-code, so performance wins here.
Non-standard: If you are concerned a lot about security issues at hand I suggest better to insert Python commands into some batch table and run these regularly with the CRON scheduler. After execution, fetch results with PHP. In this way PHP / Python execution will be de-coupled and you will have a better control on how / when to execute Python scripts.
Non-standard (avoid at all costs): Your mentioned project is moved to Git at php-python. It simply starts a new Python server on port 21230 and waits for Python commands from a PHP scripts. Now, THESE solutions are a most dangerous one, because of the additional opened port in the web server, which is a big headache to administrators and thus highly not recommended.
The last option is to question an assumption that Python is needed at all in web development of PHP. The more different languages in the company IT farm - the harder it will be to maintain all sources and harder to beat time-to-market of new features / bugs fixing. So before considering execution of Python script(s), at first think about re-writing them to plain PHP.
You can do it automatically, but these type of translators are very error-prone and incomplete - for example this one doesn't supports imports. (What the hell? Python without imports is like a bread without a flour). The second option is to learn Python and re-write code at hand into PHP. Or simply get a customer requirements and code these into PHP. Everything that can be done in Python, can be done in PHP too (at least in web development perspective).
Convert your Python script to the Django REST API, and then call it using cURL.
Building a PHP script that responds to an Ajax request is as easy as:
<?php
$command = $_POST["command"];
if ($command == "say_hello") {
$name = $_POST["name"];
echo json_encode(array("message" => "Hello, " . $name));
}
?>
and, at least if you're using jQuery on the client side, and if you specified a callback function on the original request, the array containing the message will be passed into that callback function.
But with Python it's not that simple. Or at least I haven't figured out how to make it that simple. If I just try to "print" a response (paralleling PHP's "echo" statement above) the client doesn't get anything back.
Whenever I've looked on the internet for how to respond to an Ajax request with Python, the answer always involves using Django or some other web framework.
And I know those things are great, but what is PHP doing that makes using a similar package unnecessary? I would like to be writing my server-side script in Python instead of PHP, but I'd prefer a D.I.Y. approach to using a third-party framework for what should be (right?) a pretty simple task.
Any help? An example of how to do this would be much appreciated.
But with Python it's not that simple. Or at least I haven't figured out how to make it that simple. If I just try to "print" a response (paralleling PHP's "echo" statement above) the client doesn't get anything back.
I might have some of the details wrong, but I'll try to explain why this is the case. Firstly, the PHP you're talking about is baked directly into the apache webserver. When you do an echo, it outputs the result to the response stream (a TCP connection between the server and client). When you do print in python, what you're doing is outputting the result to standard out (the command line).
How most languages work with the web, is that a request comes in to some kind of web server, and that web server executes a program. The program is responsible for returning a stream, which the webserver takes, and streams to the client over the TCP connection.
I'm assuming that the webserver redirects PHPs standard out to the webservers stream, and that is how PHP is able to use echo to return its result. This is the exception, not the rule.
So, to use python to serve requests, you need to have a webserver that can execute python in some way. This is traditionally done using CGI. More recently, something like mod_python was used to host the python within apache. Nowadays, wsgi or mod_wsgi is used, which is the standard defined for webservers talking to python.
You might want to look at something like web.py, which is a minimalist python web framework. This will get you very very close to what you're trying to do.
PHP was built with the web in mind from the very beginning. In contrast Python was designed as a general purpose language.
When you echo from PHP you're actually writing to a stream that is sent to the user as part of an HTTP response. When you do a print in python the output, by default, is written to the stdout stream which means instead of being sent to the user over http the output is written to the console (or whatever is capturing stdout at the moment).
So to PHP, HTTP is a first class citizen. To more general purpose languages like Python, Ruby, Erlang, C, C++, and so many other languages. You have to communicate to HTTP in different ways. PHP already handles that communication through apache's mod_php or through something like PHP-FPM.
Sooo....
As far as creating your own server side script, I'd highly suggest against it as Python's Frameworks take the place of the layer that PHP is built on. So creating a standards compliant http server on your own with Python isn't going to be very simple. The reason that this is so hard is that you'd either have to interface with CGI or WSGI (a Python standard for dealing with the web) or create your own HTTP server. If you think you're up to the task then I highly suggest it! You'd probably learn a whole lot by doing it, but it isn't going to be the easiest thing. The great thing is that so many libraries already take care of this communication for you. For example, if you're looking for something lightweight, I highly suggest a micro-framework like flask which is one I personally use if I need something very simple. It is much easier to get started than django, but it also has less batteries included.
Hope this helps!
There is a python module called json. Perhaps so many of the answers deal with frameworks (like Django) because json is web-centric and Django, tornado, twisted, cherrypy, etc. all are the means by which python interacts with the web.
There are many different ways to do this, and those are addressed in other questions. However, to just answer your question, python has a json library in its standard library.
Most PHP installers configure themselves by default to serve php files in web directories by running the script. Most Python installers do not. Quickest way to serve Python with apache:
In your apache config file, add AddHandler cgi-script .py to whatever block can already serve PHP files
shebang your python scripts by adding #!/usr/local/bin/python or whatever path python is on in your system
remember to print headers first, followed by a newline, then body.
use import cgi if you want to do anything more complicated than sending back a response body.
Note that this is not the recommended way to run a python website, just the fast, php-ish way.
Richardhsu has the gist of it correct.
Essentially python is a general purpose scripting language. As such, it needs a way to connect to the web, such as by opening a port and doing network programming etc. You can also use something CGI to attach to apache or other web server.
This is really no different then how Java, Ruby, Perl or C/C++ get to the web either. In fact, PHP does much the same thing. It's interface to the web server is just tighter then CGI.
If you were to have PHP interpreted from the command line, or compiled, then you would have the exact same issues that you do with Python now. The issue isn't PHP vs Python, it's how you get the scripting language of your choice attached to the internet using the HTTP protocol.
I have a set of ~5 ActionScript 3 classes that are currently used within a flex 4 application. Although their output is used to display graphs etc in my flex app, the classes themselves have no visual components - they are only used to do complex math computations (I originally implemented them in AS3 in order to avoid constant server calls when computations were needed by the flex app).
However, I now want to make the same mathematical computation engine available on my linux server so the computations can be done within PHP. Is there any way at all to access the logic in these classes on the server? I would really like to avoid re-implementing the complex logic in PHP.
Thanks so much for any help you can give!
How many lines of code in your AS3 classes, and what kind of load do you need to handle?
If you're building anything for more than one-off use then the easiest route is probably porting your ActionScript to JavaScript. There aren't any automated converters that I know of but JavaScript and AS3 are so similar that unless your five classes have thousands of lines of code you should be able to make short work of it. Once you've ported it to JavaScript it'll be trivial to run in Node.js, directly through the VM of your choice, or even in the user's browser.
If you only need this to scratch and itch or for limited use you may be able to get away with running AS3 directly in Tamarin or redtamarin. However as far as I know neither of these are currently suitable for production use.
If you are using this in a high-availability, high traffic PHP app, however, I think you'll experience a lot less pain in the long run just porting your code to PHP. AS3 and PHP are similar enough in syntax that you could probably just do a straight port.
Finally, you can find some further discussion and links in this thread: Is it possible to create a 'command line' swf?
You can use redtamarin
http://code.google.com/p/redtamarin/
from a Linux server standpoint you will be able to run
your AS3 source code as CGI (either the AS3 script directly or compiled as ABC)
or you can also bundle your AS3 code into an exe that you will then call via PHP
or make your AS3 script as executable with binfmt_misc
http://code.google.com/p/redtamarin/wiki/RunningShellScripts#Registering_an_extension_as_non-native_binaries_(Linux_only)
here on production and development servers we use redtamarin
as scripts, to do our SVN hooks, automate tasks on linux servers etc.
as socket servers, http servers and CGI
as executable to reuse AS3 logic into our automated builds
etc.
look a bit in the documentation you will see you have a lot of options
to reuse your AS3 code: stdin/stdout/stderr, sockets, pipes, CGI, etc.
I have developed a PHP web application, but a client insists on a real Windows application, since he doesn't like running the software inside a browser.
Are there any solutions for this, any compilers to turn a web project into a Windows exe ?
I have looked at Phc-Win , but that seems more suited for small command line utils, not for entire web-applications...
UPDATE:
just found this myself, both look quite promising...
http://www.zzee.com/phpexe/
http://www.exeoutput.com/index.php
There's no tool for this, short of a simple wrapper app that embeds a browser inside an otherwise normal application window. Your PHP app would have to be completely re-written to include ALL of the overhead code necessary to build a GUI - basically all the 'display' stuff that a browser does automatically, would have to added to your app.
Well some of you did not google good enough:
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-cross-platform-application-development/
Supports most of the "web-languages" to write native Applications.
Tutorial Reference for Appcelerator: http://appceleratortitanium.com/tutorials/3-appcelerator-titanium-tutorial-beginners.html
Quote:
"Q: What languages can I use to make desktop apps?
A: Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, HTML, HTML5, and CSS."
Not exactly what you are looking for: http://www.roadsend.co/home/index.php?pageID=compiler
You may look into "HipHop" (made by Facebook): Converts PHP to compileable C++-
There's a tool for this. :-) I never used it but you can try this: Winbinder.
It is simple to compile your PHP source code into an executable. Facebook released a compiler for PHP in early-2010, called HipHop, which aims to create C++. You could then compile this code, for example using gcc, to machine-code.
The more difficult point for a complex Web-App like yours is the user interface. When compiling the way I described above, the application can be run from command line - this might work for simple tasks, but not, if your application returns HTML.
One possibility to solve this problem is PHP-GTK. PHP-GTK is a API for GTK (the graphical user interface used by Linux Ubuntu by default), written in PHP. Using this solution would have to read some documentation about this API, and you would need to rewrite some parts of your program, but it would probably be the most beautiful solution, because it would create a "native" experience.
Another possible solution could involve Adobe AIR, which lets your create programs for the desktop, using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but I don't know if and how this would work together with your compiled PHP.
Please also note that it isn't absolutely necessary to compile your PHP for it to run on the client's computer; You could also ship the PHP-interperter right with your (uncompiled) PHP-script. Of course, compiling brings benefits, such as faster execution of the program.
-- André
I realize it's probably something strange, but here is what I have.
I have an application (handwriting recognition engine) written in C/C++. This application has Perl wrapper which was made by application's authors using SWIG. My website is written in PHP, so I'm looking for some ways to make PHP work with C/C++ application.
The only way I can think of now is to create a CGI script (perl script) which accepts POST request from my website (AJAX request), sends it to the recognition engine through it's Perl wrapper, gets the required data and returns the required data as a response to AJAX request.
Do you think it could be done this way? Are there any better solutions?
Thank you!
Do you think it could be done this way?
Yes, no reason it can't be done.
Are there any better solutions?
May be. If you intend to execute the perl wrapper as a system call to a separate Perl script, you don't need a separate CGI perl script. You can just do system calls from PHP in your site directly. Not a big difference but might help if PHP is more of your comfort zone for web stuff than Perl's CGI
OTOH, if the Perl script wrapper is a fairly obvious and simple set of API calls, and you feel comfortable with Perl CGI, a better soltrion is to port that command line Perl script into the Perl CGI script which uses the API internally, bypassing system calls.
For high-volume stuff, removing system calls is a Big Win performance wise, plus allows for much better and easier error handling.
What you are proposing is:
web client <-> Perl CGI script <-> Perl wrapper <-> C program
There is nothing particularly wrong with this approach, although it's clearly not the most efficient possible way to do it. How important is performance? If it's doesn't have to be amazingly fast, sure do it this way, which sounds like it's the easiest to develop.
If you want to go a step further, then the obvious point of optimization in the schematic above is to collapse the two Perl layers:
web client <-> Perl CGI script <-> C program
The question is, is it worth your time to do this? You can look at the source for the Perl wrapper and decide for yourself.
My advice would be to initially develop it the simple way and then if, for whatever reason, you decide it is insufficient, to merge the two Perl scripts into one. But for now, don't worry about it and go ahead with your idea.