How to call a Python Script from PHP?

Question

I have some code written in PHP, but I have also developed a script written in Python. Is it possible to call this Python script from the PHP code?

If yes, how can I pass parameters to the Python script from the PHP?

I have tried to find an answer without any success.

Can someone give me a clue?

• J Bourne: Yes definitely, it should be possible.. But please give some more details. Are you running both through commandline or web
• Senthil Kumaran: Duplicate - stackoverflow.com/questions/166944/calling-python-in-php ?

Answer 1

You use the system function: http://php.net/manual/en/function.system.php

Something like this:

$mystring = system('python myscript.py myargs', $retval);

• Krishna: what is supposed to be present in retval and mystring. Are they same or different, I am assuming that retval will contain what all is present on the console. Can you please help on understanding that also.
• Nalaurien: the confusion comes from the use of retval. The documentation is also at fault for this as they name this return var, then declare it as retval also. but in the above example $retval is the status of execution, an integer. and $mystring is the last line of output from the script you just ran, a string. Hope that clears things up.
• Daren Thomas: The return code ($retval here) of an executable program is an integer. The convention is, 0 for no errors and anything else is an application-specific error code.

Answer 2

I managed to make simple function PY([parametress], code) for PHP. You may almost include python code to your PHP. You may pass as well some simple input variables to python process. You cannot get any data back, but I believe that could be easily fixed :) Not ok for using at webhosting (potentionally unsafe, system call), I created it for PHP-CLI..

<?php
function PY()
{
 $p=func_get_args();
 $code=array_pop($p);
 if (count($p) % 2==1) return false;
 $precode='';
 for ($i=0;$i<count($p);$i+=2) $precode.=$p[$i]." = json.loads('".json_encode($p[$i+1])."')\n";
 $pyt=tempnam('/tmp','pyt');
 file_put_contents($pyt,"import json\n".$precode.$code);
 system("python {$pyt}");
 unlink($pyt);
}
//begin
echo "This is PHP code\n";
$r=array('hovinko','ruka',6);
$s=6;
PY('r',$r,'s',$s,<<<ENDPYTHON
print('This is python 3.4 code. Looks like included in PHP :)');
s=s+42
print(r,' : ',s)
ENDPYTHON
); 
echo "This is PHP code again\n";
?> 

Answer 3

You can try this:

python scripts:

 test.py:
 print "hello"

then php Scripts

index.php:
 $i =`python test.py`;
 echo $i;

Answer 4

Yes you can simply use exec() to call python program in php. simple sample program i have included here.

$pyscript = 'G:\wamp\www\ll\test.py';
$python = 'C:\\Python27\\python.exe';
$cmd='$pyscript $python';
exec("$cmd", $output);

You should specify your python.exe path and your python file path.Its must needed in windows environment.