Hi John, I know that you are probably already overwhelmed
> by maintenance and developmente of this great package, but
> I came across a post on the mod_python list in which a
> person was inquiring about the existance of a plotting
> package for mod_python since mod_PHP and mod_Perl have
> theirs. I thought that this could be a great thing to add
> to matplotlib: a mod_python backend. It would be awesome
> if we could have scientific python applets that could
> generate full graphical output on the web.
> It shouldn't be too hard to do since it could use any of
> the existing backends and just export the resulting figure
> to mod_python to embed in a web page...
> what do you think?
I am currently using matplotlib as a plotting backend for a web
server. I'm working with a PHP developer who is writing the html, and
he calls an XML-RPC python server with the parameters for the plot.
The XML-RPC server does some number crunching, generates a plot with
matplotlib, saves it in a tmp dir, and passes the image filename back
to the PHP client. I'm using the GTK backend running in an Xvfb.
I don't know much about apache, or what is involved in making
something for mod_python. You wouldn't really need a 'mod_python
backend' would you? My guess is that you would just need to import
matplotlib into your mod_python python code, for example using the GD
backend, and plot away. Or is there something more to it?
Do you know if you can use mod_python and mod_php together? Can
functions written in one mod_* language communicate with functions
written in another. My guess is not.... It would be great if I could
use mod_python and my front end person uses mod_php, and we could
communicate within apache w/o going through the XML-RPC server.
John Hunter