I have a Python command-line script that can take some time to run (from 5 seconds to 5 minutes), depending on the checks it does. The script uses many command-line arguments, some mandatory, most optional.
I'd like to "webify" this script, making it possible to access it from a Web browser, but without changing the core python script, so by launching it from something else (like another Python script for instance)
I've used mod_python with Apache before so it's not too much of a problem to build a Python script that generates a Web page with a form and a Submit button and run my core python script from it.
The problem is with the output of the core python script. I don't want to wait until it has completed to display its output in a DIV (or in a FRAME). As soon as it generates a line, I want that line to be displayed on the Web interface, a kind of text streaming in the DIV.
I know how to do this from a Javascript contained in a HTML page or as an external Javascript file, but not from the output of another program.
Any idea how I can achieve this? I prefer to keep it all Python+Apache but if something else is really required (PHP, AJAX, Javascript, ...), I can live with it.
As suggested by whatnick below, I tried to redirect the output of the core python script in a temporary file and display this file using the AJAX Logfile Trailer & Viewer code I found on the Web.
It sort of works but there is still some buffering, as the lines appear in the "log tail page" in several chunks of lines, not lines by lines. This is most probably due to the fact the AJAX script reloads the log file using a timer, every X milliseconds (configurable in the script, used for a Javascript timer). Even if I lower it, it still not fast enough for my core script, which can sometimes output several lines very fast.