Can't execute Python script from PHP document

Question

I am running a PHP document on an Apache server on my Raspberry Pi and I want it to run a file when a button is clicked. I put some echo commands under the command to make t

Answer 1

This worked for me:

test.php

<?php
    echo shell_exec("python test.py");
?>

test.py

f = open("test.txt", "a+")
f.write("hiya buddy!!\n")
f.close()
print "some output"

Here's my relevant ls -l output from /var/www/html:

jason@Jason-one /var/www/html $ ls -l
-rw-r--r--  1 jason    jason    44 Sep 20 18:12 test.php
-rwxr-xr-x  1 jason    jason    82 Sep 20 17:44 test.py
-rw-rw-rw-  1 jason    jason    38 Sep 20 18:15 test.txt

Since I don't have GPIO pins on my laptop, I decided to write to a file as a test. Notice I didn't have to use sudo because of the way I set the permissions on test.py.

Answer 2

as you said you are running it like apache->php->shell_exec(SUDO..)

So the apache user has to be in sudoers file, better you don't give sudo to apache instead give apache (www-data) user right to run your python program

put first line in your python script: #!/usr/bin/env python so the script knows which program to open it with..

then

change group:

chgrp www-data /path/to/python-script.py

make it executabel

chmod +x /path/to/python-script.py

try it

shell_exec("/path/to/python-script.py");

I hope it works ;)

TIPP: Apache and PHP are for delivering Documents and Strings, if you want some kind of control and an API start with nodejs and https://www.npmjs.com/package/rpi-gpio package. This way you will have one place for your solid automation environment