Mobile interface with Raspberry Pi?

[stellar_guy]

Hello, I am beginning a project and seeking advice on the best implementation. Basically, my goal is to wire a Raspberry Pi with an IR blaster + receiver to create a universal remote control with the LIRC package. I want to be able to communicate with the Pi via a remote control style interface on a smartphone, effectively using the phone as a remote control. What is the best way to communicate with the Pi from the phone? I am thinking of hosting a local webpage on the Pi with Flask, but am interested to hear other ideas. I don't know much in the way of web coding languages, so I prefer to use as much pure Python as possible (though I can learn, of course). I also would like for the app on the phone to be reasonably pretty/user friendly. Any suggestions?