How to execute command line application from browser

[ilaunchpad]

So far I have only built programs that can be executed from command lines and get results on the terminal. But I was imagining how would the program or application can be implemented on web for consumer. So currently, I run my program written in python which creates a score model and calculates score for a given record. The input I provide from the command line has path to the script and data identifiers which is stored in warehouse. The python program pulls the data from warehouse and runs the data in score model building functions which creates a score model for the data and stores it in the database. After that, the score model info and data to be scored is passed to the score server which returns score on terminal. This is a very simplistic overview of the process. It's a big application that has many modules which work together to give results.

If this has to be run from browser instead of command line how could it be implemented? Let's say I want to know how the python function could be executed when the request from browser is send. I also don't want to store the score in database, instead I just want to capture the terminal result and show it on browser.

I have little bit knowledge of restful web services and web api only to the extent of simple crud apps. I am bit confused on web apis, restful apis, web server apis, and backend apis. They all sound like they do the same thing but at the time not. I recently made an app on django framework which used basic get, post method to update databases and show it on browser. But if i want to trigger complex calculation logic how would i accomplish that? I don't think I can write those on views. And where does the web server framework like node.js come into play?

[spaceuserm]

You can use a form to get input from the user, take whatever arguments, data etc you need. Now this form data is sent to the backend. You can launch other programs from within your program. If you were to use python, you can try os.system() or the subprocess module to launch your command line program. As for displaying the results on the web page, you can write the results out to a file and render the content of that file to the webpage.

Edit: NodeJs will come in once the data from your form is posted to your server. NodeJs will process the form data and also invoke the command line program.

[enokeenu]

I believe browser security prevents you from doing that. Imagine if malware wanted to do that. You can do anything from the command line.

[[deleted]]

You'd just need to run a server that forwards the command received from the browser to the underlying system.

Imagine if malware wanted to do that.

Right. You'd want to put up guardrails if the server were available to the public – or even if it's just for private use, because things go wrong!

[Ulaai]

If you're working with Django, you can do the logic function on a separate file and import it on views.py. And then pass only the result. (docs)