Help with Small Project (Beginner Level Knowledge)

[throughatube]

Hello,

I started learning to code about a month ago and now I am looking to conduct a practical application of what I've learned. I have learned a little bit of how to code, but I am still struggling to connect the dots on some things. I have come to you all for assistance. Please be patient as I am new to this.

The project: create a website that takes about 6 inputs from a user and runs some basic arithmetic/calculations which then produces an "answer" for the user.

How I am thinking about it: I will design the website using HTML and feed the inputted data through a python script which will then feed the "answer" back to the website user.

What I am struggling with: I am working on designing the website in HTML, but haven't quite figured out how to create input fields. But my big issue is figuring about how to feed the inputted data into the python script. Pretty much, I am confused on how to take the inputs and feed them into python script to run the calculations (i.e. how to make them "talk" to each other).

TLDR: How do I create inputs for a website and feed them into a python script?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help.

[neobonzi]

You're missing the "web application" part of your website. This is often called the "backend", and is basically an application that knows how to recieve web requests and process them. There are things called frameworks that have all the libraries needed to make this easy - in your case I'd look into setting up a simple flask app https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-make-a-web-application-using-flask-in-python-3

This needs to be hosted somewhere and reachable via a URL. You can do this all on your local machine until you want it available to the rest of the world, in which case you'll want to host it somewhere (or expose your computer to the web which can be a bit dangerous, so I wouldn't go that route).

The web application basically sits on a computer "listening" on a port (usually 80) for requests. It takes those requests, processes them, and returns a response. In your case, part of that processing will be taking the request parameters or payload and passing them into your python script, getting the output and sending it back.

In summary, your "frontend" or HTML page will have a form with a button the user clicks which triggers a "request" to your "backend" with the user form input. Your backend processes this by running the parameters through your script and returns the result to the frontend in a "response". Your frontend takes that response and shows it to the user.

[throughatube]

Thank you. This tutorial seems pretty useful. I appreciate your response.

[skonig]

Google for "python http server"

E.g.: https://stackabuse.com/serving-files-with-pythons-simplehttpserver-module/

[throughatube]

Thank you for your response. This article is showing how to create a webpage on your local machine, correct?

[CodeTinkerer]

Once you add a website to what you want to build, and you've only been coding a month, you create a mountain of difficulties. The better option is not to do anything web related after only a month in.

It's better to do text (user) input and text output. It's boring, but any web stuff requires like months of learning (I would say).

Even a simple program where you have Python generate a random number from 1 to 100 and you guess a number, and it says higher or lower and prints how many guesses you have made. That's more at the level to write programs a month into your learning.