Ask HN: How do you share scripts with non-coders?

glimcat · on July 24, 2014

Set up a lightweight web interface using Flask. When people log in and submit a job, it gets added to an RQ task queue for asynchronous execution. If they need anything back at the end, job status, results, whatever - that goes in a database. Congratulations, you've just made a simple web app.

If people are actually getting use out of it, go back and pretty it up a bit with a Bootstrap template or whatever, it doesn't take much here to have meaningful effects on user perception. It mostly just has to be nice enough that it looks reasonably professional when people show it off in meetings, which is NOT a cutting-edge design problem.

Add more pages for more scripts as needed, and tag users with permissions so you know which scripts should be exposed to which users.

If merited, go back and add fancy features like generating PDF reports and emailing them to the head of department every week.

hackerews · on July 24, 2014

This is interesting. What if users have to put in their own inputs for the scripts? For instance, specify start-date and end-date for a sql query, or upload a spreadsheet to do the python analysis on?

glimcat · on July 25, 2014

You'd use Flask-WTF for forms.

https://flask-wtf.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

It can also handle file uploads.

https://flask-wtf.readthedocs.org/en/latest/form.html

You'd need to define a model which describes the form fields, handle it in your view, and add it to your page template.

forms.py

    from flask_wtf import Form
    from wtforms import TextField, PasswordField
    from wtforms.validators import DataRequired
    
    class LoginForm(Form):
        email = TextField('Email', validators=[DataRequired()])
        password = PasswordField('Password', validators=[DataRequired()])

views.py

    from forms import LoginForm
    
    @app.route('/login', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
    def login():
        form = LoginForm()
        if form.validate_on_submit():
            email = form.data.get('email', None)
            password = form.data.get('password', None)
            do_login_stuff(email, password)
        else:
            return render_template('login_page.html', form=form)

login_page.html

    {% extends "base.html" %}

    {% block content %}
    <h3>Log in:</h3>
    <form method="POST" action="{{ url_for('login') }}">
      {{ form.hidden_tag() }}
      {{ form.email.label }} {{ form.email }}
      {{ form.password.label }} {{ form.password }}
      <input type="submit" value="Log in">
    </form>
    {% endblock %}

hackerews · on July 25, 2014

Yeah that's the tough part. I think I'd have to set up a model for each script I add to flask.

glimcat · on July 25, 2014

Here's an option for organizing a "bunch of scripts" app that might be less intimidating to maintain.

foo_script.py

    from flask import render_template
    from flask_wtf import Form
    from wtforms import TextField
    from wtforms.validators import DataRequired
    
    class ScriptForm(Form):
        param1 = TextField('Param1', validators=[DataRequired()])
        param2 = TextField('Param2', validators=[DataRequired()])
        param3 = TextField('Param3', validators=[DataRequired()])

    @app.route('/foo-script', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
    def foo_script():
        form = ScriptForm()
        if form.validate_on_submit():
            do_stuff(form.data)
        else:
            return render_template('foo_script.html', form=form)
    
    def do_stuff(data):
        for key in data:
            print '%s: %s' % (key, data[key])

foo_script.html

    {% extends "base.html" %}

    {% block content %}
    <h3>Run foo script:</h3>
    <form method="POST" action="{{ url_for('foo_script') }}">
      {{ form.hidden_tag() }}
      {{ form.param1.label }} {{ form.param1 }}
      {{ form.param2.label }} {{ form.param2 }}
      {{ form.param3.label }} {{ form.param3 }}
      <input type="submit" value="Run foo script">
    </form>
    {% endblock %}

base.html

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html lang="en">
      <head>
        <title>FooCorp Script Service</title>
      </head>
      <body>
        {% block content %}{% endblock %}
      </body>
    </html>

app.py

    from flask import Flask
    
    app = Flask(__name__)
    app.config.from_pyfile('config.py')
    
    import foo_script, bar_script, baz_script

config.py

    # You need this for CSRF protection & cookie signing
    SECRET_KEY = randomly_generated_secret_key

You should also look into Flask's blueprints at some point if it keeps growing. But it's not really essential, just another tool to help you keep projects organized. Flask is mostly "do whatever makes sense in your specific case" rather than imposing many global constraints on structure.

Also, I'd use gunicorn if you're deploying your own server. It's a bit less intimidating to get set up than uWSGI, and the main tradeoff is that it doesn't support quite as many thousands of users (i.e. not relevant).

donpinkus · on July 25, 2014

Where would you actually host the webapp? Would you set up a new server on your intranet and share a link to it?

glimcat · on July 25, 2014

That depends on your resources & priorities.

Internal if you have the IT resources & infrastructure for that to be reasonably painless. VPS if you need to access it from multiple public locations and don't want to expose an internal server, or if "internal server" isn't a thing where you work. Heroku if you don't know how to admin Linux or don't want to spend the time worrying about it.

BWStearns · on July 24, 2014

I had a similar situation and I either wrapped them in really simple tkinter interface or used py2exe. Sometimes I wrote up some dialogues to get user input to control the script wrap it up in a folder with a .sh file that runs the python script and just tell them that the .sh file is the program. Double click, opens program, follow instructions (hacky and fragile but got the job done).

They were usually limited in scope enough where I just let the script crash on most errors and just warned the users about it.

hackerews · on July 25, 2014

I did py2exe too when I was working a consulting gig a few years ago! :)

bluerail · on July 24, 2014

I have created a standardized code numbers for the output (like 12 for success, 13 for suspended, etc..) and the script will output the respective number as an output of which the list of numbers and their respective output is with them already..

Then, I ll just Zip it, and send them the scripts along with some step by step instructions on how to execute it (with screenshots) and the results expected.. At beginning it will be hassle but on the way most documents will become common for all...

hackerews · on July 24, 2014

I've done this too. Takes so long to set up all the instructions though.

sudont · on July 24, 2014

At my day job we generally will bundle small procedures/scripts into a simple webapp with either flask or express.js. For our backend systems, we're looking into rundeck to allow non sudoers the ability to restart a system service. That might be potentially useful.

It seems like there might be a niche for a "Delphi for the web" stack of reusable components and standard backend systems.

hackerews · on July 24, 2014

This sounds really cool! So non-engineers can just click "run" on a system service and get the output? How do you handle small procedures/scripts that require them to put in inputs? Or does that not pop up for you..

skratlo · on July 24, 2014

Send them a link to iPython Notebook, either host it yourself or use http://nbviewer.ipython.org/ . Should be easy to teach them to modify the input data and re-run the script from the web UI.

markcampbell · on July 24, 2014

Link to zip of gist separated into the files related.

donpinkus · on July 25, 2014

Is a non-engineer able to understand this?

markcampbell · on Aug 2, 2014

It'll be a zip file that you extract -- it'll be in the correct structure.