Not everything in computing has bindings for Python (as much as I would like that to be true), so it's important to learn how to work with the host system and pass details back and forth.
The goal for this project is to build a very simple django server (so simple that it's only two views, one form, and one model) that passes user input to the operating system, runs a command, retrieves the output, and sends it back to the client. We use the model to back up a copy of what people submit to the page, and have a second endpoint at /history where it lists the last ten things that were sent through the form.
Cowsay is a utility that has been around for a very long time, but is essentially just a toy. If you don't have it already, then you can install it simply by running:
- OSX:
brew install cowsay - Ubuntu / Debian:
sudo apt install cowsay
Sample usage: cowsay "Hello, world!"
WINDOWS USERS ONLY:
Install cowsay by installing it through NPM: npm install -g cowsay. When using Python's subprocess module, you will most likely need to pass shell=True as well. This is because Windows does not look at the PATH without passing that flag.
Write a Django server that:
- has a view for the index that does two things: if there is output, render it to the browser, and always renders a fresh version of our form
- has a form that just takes in a text line
- has a model that we can save the text line to
- on submission of the form, uses python's subprocess module to pass the submitted text to the cowsay utility and retrieves the output
- re-renders the homepage with a fresh form and the output from cowsay (hint: the output is preformatted)
- backs up a copy of the text submitted by the user
- has a page at the endpoint /history that displays the 10 most recent strings submitted
