Interacting with system commands using a web dev language

Question

Hi all,

First of all, sorry for the vague title.

Let me explain. At work we're currently using SunGrid

I've been assigned a project to create a web interface wrapper for interacting with the engine. i.e. displaying users jobs, submitting jobs via a nice GUI etc. (most of the sgrid commands output xml which is nice)

My question for you chaps is the following:

What web dev language would you use to interact with the system? i.e. use the language to do a system call and evaluate the response.

I'm not after an argument on which language is best, I just would like to know which language is specifically good for interacting with the system and is also good for web dev.

Answer 1

Hi, almost any web oriented language could interact with system commands.

I personally would use python (you can use a framework like django, pylons etc.. or as CGI), and is great interacting with system commands and XML

In python you can do all the system calls and reponse evaluation via

• subprocess module for simple, non-interactive commands (you run a command with parameters, it does its work, returns a result and exits)
• pexpect for complex commands where you also are requested to do some input before it stops

for XML you have XML Elementtree module