Question

Can I use os.system() or subprocess.call() to execute a Python program on a webserver?

I mean can I write these functions in a .py script and run it from a web browser and expect the program to be executed?

Thanks a lot.

EDIT:
Sorry for all the confusion, I am giving you more background to my problem.

The reason I am trying to do is this.
I have a Python program that accepts an XML file and returns me TTF file.
I run that program in terminal like this:

ttx somefile.xml 

After which it does all the work and generates a ttf file.
Now when I deploy this script as a module on web server. I use a to allow user to browse and select the XML file.
Then I read the file data to temporary file and then pass the file to the module script to be executed like this:

ttx.main([temp_filename]) 

Is this right way to do it? Because at this point, I don’t get any error in the log or in browser. I get blank screen.

When this didn’t work, I was going to try os.system or subprocess.call

Answer 1

So long as your server is configured to run CGI scripts (Apache’s documentation for that is here, for example), yes, you can execute a python script from a webserver. Simply make sure the script is in the appropriate cgi-bin/ directory and that the file has executable permission on the server.

With regards to your comments:

1. You can, if you really want, explicitly allow other folders on the server to run executable code. I don’t know what server you’re using, but on Apache this is done by setting Option +ExecCGI for the folder you want. Again, see the docs I linked to.
2. You need to give an absolute path with respect to the server. As an example, a site I develop has the layout: /public_html/cgi-bin/ When I want to access .cgi or .py files, the url for the site is something like http://chess.narnia.homeunix.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi. You can also set up re-directs to certain files if you want.
3. One way to pass parameters through your browser is to append them to the URL like an HTTP POST method. Here’s a good example of doing that.

Is that what you were looking for with your question, or did you want to actually invoke the python script with os.system()?