Starting a web app now which will use python that later this need to embed nicely into a Drupal site?

Question

This week, I want to start a web mapping and data visualization site for my work.

Unfortunately, I just found out my work place will be using Drupal in a few months down the road. (Most of my web development experience is with App Engine.)

My problem is that I need to make sure my web application embeds nicely into the larger Drupal site that outside consultants plan to make.

I am most comfy with Python, and I was expecting to use the Python-Django combo instead. There are important python libraries and modules I must have that cant be found or re-written in PHP.

I was thinking I will avoid all django on the web pages so things dont get confusing when the Drupal switch is made.

I will have the javascript on the web page make calls to python on the server which then spits out JSON data, and I think this will stay the same even after the Drupal switch.

Does this make sense?

Any general or specific suggestions that may guide me are greatly appreciated!

• JoshD: "...that cant be found or re-written in PHP." I'm incredulous. I doubt very much that there is anything that can be written in python (or any Turing complete language) that cannot also be written in PHP.
• b_dev: For example, lets say a user requests some statistical summary of the data, on the server I want to do this data crunching in python using the numpy library. Perhaps PHP has something like that? I am unsure. Also there may be times when I wanted to use python's imaging library PIL. But most importantly I want to re-use lots of my own data analysis code. Thanks. Perhaps I should just have PHP call the python scripts?
• JoshD: Sorry, I was nitpicking there. I'd go with calling the python scripts from PHP. The only catch is that they may not want to keep python after the switch...

Answer 1

If you write API calls and utilize Drupal Services module, you can hook into just about anything and send/receive JSON/XML data.

• b_dev: Thank you for helping direct me in my research!