Question

I want to have a “control panel” on a website, and when a button is pressed, I want it to run a command on the server (my computer). The panel is to run different python scripts I wrote (one script for each button), and I want to run the panel on my Mac, my iPod touch, and my wii. The best way I see for this is a website, since they all have browsers. Is there a javascript or something to run a command on my computer whenever the button is pressed?

EDIT: I heard AJAX might work for server-based things like this, but I have no idea how to do that. Is there like a ‘system’ block or something I can use?

Answer 1

Here are three options:

1. Have each button submit a form with the name of the script in a hidden field. The server will receive the form parameters and can then branch off to run the appropriate script.
2. Have each button hooked to it’s own unique URL and use javascript on the button click to just set window.location to that new URL. Your server will receive that URL and can decide which script to run based on the URL. You could even just use a link on the web page with no javascript.
3. Use Ajax to issue a unique URL to your server. This is essentially the same (from the server’s point of view) as the previous two options. The main difference is that the web browser doesn’t change what URL it’s pointing to. The ajax call just directs the server to do something and return some data which the host web page can then do whatever it wants with.