Create a hyperlink (or button) that executes a python script and then redirects when script completes

Question

Alright, I managed to get it working how I want (although some/most might disagree with the method). I used Flask as recommended below. The part that might be considered \"w

Answer 1

A simple way to tackle this problem would be to use a simple web framework like Flask to build the web part uf your system. In the request handler for your magic link, you would need to spawn your script and keep track of it. A simple way to see if your script is done and relay that to your user is to periodically send off an ajax request to check for completion.

So for example the Flask website could look like:

import threading
import subprocess
import uuid
from flask import Flask
from flask import render_template, url_for, abort, jsonify, request
app = Flask(__name__)

background_scripts = {}

def run_script(id):
    subprocess.call(["/path/to/yourscript.py", "argument1", "argument2"])
    background_scripts[id] = True

@app.route('/')
def index():
    return render_template('index.html')

@app.route('/generate')
def generate():
    id = str(uuid.uuid4())
    background_scripts[id] = False
    threading.Thread(target=lambda: run_script(id)).start()
    return render_template('processing.html', id=id)

@app.route('/is_done')
def is_done():
    id = request.args.get('id', None)
    if id not in background_scripts:
        abort(404)
    return jsonify(done=background_scripts[id])

And the index.html:

click me

And processing.html:

    Processing...

This is all untested code at the moment, but I hope you get some idea on how to approach this problem. Also keep in mind that this will only work if you serve the page from one process, so if you set up Apache and mod_wsgi, make sure there is only one process in the process group.

If you need a more complex solution, you might want to look at message queues and the like.