Running a Python script from PHP

Question

I m trying to run a Python script from PHP using the following command   exec   usr bin python2 7  srv http assets py switch py arg1 arg2     However  PHP simply doesn t produce any output  Error reporting is set to E ALL and display errors is on   Here s what I ve tried    I used python2   usr bin python2 and python2 7 instead of  usr bin python2 7 I also used a relative path instead of an absolute path which didn t change anything either  I tried using the commands exec  shell exec  system    However  if I run  if  exec  echo TEST       TEST         echo  exec works        it works perfectly fine while shutdown now doesn t do anything   PHP has the permissions to access and execute the file   EDIT  Thanks to Alejandro  I was able to fix the problem  If you have the same problem  don t forget that your webserver probably hopefully doesn t run as root  Try logging in as your webserver s user or a user with similar permissions and try to run the commands yourself

User · Answer

All the options above create new system process. Which is a performance nightmare. For this purpose I stitched together PHP module with "transparent" calls to Python.

https://github.com/kirmorozov/runpy

It may be tricky to compile, but will save system processes and will let you keep Python runtime between PHP calls.

User · Answer

In my case I needed to create a new folder in the www directory called scripts  Within scripts I added a new file called test py    I then used sudo chown www-data root scripts and sudo chown www-data root test py   Then I went to the new scripts directory and used sudo chmod  x test py   My test py file it looks like this  Note the different Python version      usr bin env python3 5 print  Hello World      From php I now do this    message   exec   var www scripts test py 2 gt  amp 1    print r  message     And you should see  Hello World

User · Answer

This is so trivial  but just wanted to help anyone who already followed along Alejandro s suggestion but encountered this error      sh  blabla py  command not found   If anyone encountered that error  then a little change needs to be made to the php file by Alejandro    command   escapeshellcmd  python blabla py

User · Answer

If you want to know the return status of the command and get the entire stdout output you can actually use exec    command    ls   exec  command   out   status      out is an array of all lines   status is the return status  Very useful for debugging   If you also want to see the stderr output you can either play with proc open or simply add 2 gt  amp 1 to your  command  The latter is often sufficient to get things working and way faster to  implement

User · Answer

The above methods seem to be complex  Use my method as a reference   I have these two files    run php mkdir py   Here  I ve created an HTML page which contains a GO button  Whenever you press this button a new folder will be created in directory whose path you have mentioned   run php   x000D   x000D   lt html gt  x000D    lt body gt  x000D     lt head gt  x000D      lt title gt  x000D       run x000D      lt  title gt  x000D     lt  head gt  x000D   x000D      lt form method  post  gt  x000D   x000D       lt input type  submit  value  GO  name  GO  gt  x000D      lt  form gt  x000D    lt  body gt  x000D   lt  html gt  x000D   x000D   lt  php x000D   if isset   POST  GO     x000D     x000D    shell exec  python  var www html lab mkdir py    x000D    echo success   x000D     x000D    gt  x000D   x000D   x000D    mkdir py     usr bin env python     import os     os makedirs  thisfolder

User · Answer

Tested on Ubuntu Server 10 04  I hope it helps you also on Arch Linux   In PHP use shell exec function      Execute command via shell and return the complete output as a string       It returns the output from the executed command or NULL if an error   occurred or the command produces no output     lt  php    command   escapeshellcmd   usr custom test py     output   shell exec  command   echo  output     gt    In Python file test py  verify this text in first line   see shebang explain       usr bin env python   Also Python file must have correct privileges  execution for user www-data   apache if PHP script runs in browser or curl  and or must be  executable   Also all commands into  py file must have correct privileges   Taken from php manual      Just a quick reminder for those trying to use shell exec on a   unix-type platform and can t seem to get it to work  PHP executes as   the web user on the system  generally www for Apache   so you need to   make sure that the web user has rights to whatever files or   directories that you are trying to use in the shell exec command    Other wise  it won t appear to be doing anything    To make executable a file on unix-type platforms   chmod  x myscript py

User · Answer

To clarify which command to use based on the situation  exec   - Execute an external program  system   - Execute an external program and display the output  passthru   - Execute an external program and display raw output  Source  http   php net manual en function exec php

User · Answer

Alejandro nailed it  adding clarification to the exception  Ubuntu or Debian  - I don t have the rep to add to the answer itself   sudoers file  sudo visudo  exception added  www-data ALL  ALL  NOPASSWD  ALL

User · Answer

I recommend using passthru and handling the output buffer directly   ob start    passthru   usr bin python2 7  srv http assets py switch py arg1 arg2     output   ob get clean

User · Answer

Inspired by Alejandro Quiroz   lt  php    command   escapeshellcmd  python test py     output   shell exec  command   echo  output     gt   Need to add Python  and don t need the path

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