arcpy from a web page

[BillChappell]

Hi, we're constantly exporting data out of our database. We have python scripts that accept parameters and then export and zip up the shapefiles files. From our dashboard, I'd like to put a form where we could select a type and then hit a button, this would then pass the parameter to my python script and create the shapefile for download. 

Why I can program in JS, Python, PHP and Node, I have not been able to get the python working on our server. I know there is Django, Flask, and others, but I'm not sure which one would be the best choice to work with ArcPy. 

I noticed the documentation is also all over the place, is there a cookbook or instructions that demonstrate this concept? I found the thread Exposing-Arcpy-Python-Script-to-Web but that was 8 years ago, anything newer and more complete?

[BillChappell · Accepted solution]

Figured it out. You can set up an ISAPI handler to pass requests to py files to the python executable.

Like step 7 here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6823316/python-on-iis-how

This worked for me, and since the site is internal and not heavily used, and I'm still prototyping a solution, I was able to avoid installing a larger framework.

After following the instructions I have a virtual folder called py, so I created a simple python file and placed it into this folder.

I called it helloworld.py just to test it. Its contents.

-----------helloworld.py script --------------------------

print('Content-Type: text/plain')

print('')

print('Hello, world!')

print('')

import os, sys

GET={}

args=os.getenv("QUERY_STRING").split('&')

for arg in args:

    t=arg.split('=')

    if len(t)>1: k,v=arg.split('='); GET=v

x = GET.get('user_name')

print(x)

-------------------------------------------------------------

Next, I opened a browser and typed:

http://localhost/py/helloworld.py?user_name=Bill

The page responded:

Hello, world!

Bill

At this point, I have a python script on a web server that I can call by a url, and it runs. Next stop to create a webpage, that has a select (picklist) and a button, when pressed, fires off a ajax get to my script and have my script read the parameter and run. But that's just JavaScript.