I have an existing VS-2008 Windows application with back-end MySQL Server 5.5. The existing application uses Crystal Reports for reporting. I want to get rid of Crystal Reports and want to use another tool that seamlessly integrates with VS-2010 Express. I want to remove reporting options from my existing application and want to write a new WPF reporting application using VS-2010 Express. I want a free tool but as I am using MySQL, tools like SSRS are not useful for me.
What are the options? I am planning the other way round by writing a Python reporting application powered by any open-source Python reporting tool.
For WPF you can use http://wpfreports.codeplex.com/ for simple reports or follow this article instructions to make you own: http://janrep.blog.codeplant.net/post/WPF-Multipage-Reports-Part-I.aspx
I've used SSRS, but only the RDLC part (you can use it with any datasource), but not very happy with the results and WPF does not have a native RDLC ReportViewer.
Also check this related question What's the best approach to printing/reporting from WPF?
Why not have both? IronPython is a python implementation on top of .NET. It allows you to write code that is totally python, but gives you access to all of .NET, including WPF.
For a quick look at what this looks like, here is a basic WPF project using ironpython.
Related
I want to use a Python script as a frontend to a Prolog program that uses the SWI-PL engine.
So, the components of the setup are:
Python (2.7 or higher)
SWI-PL: website here
I've been looking around for an interface between SWI-PL and Python.
What I found are:
PySwip but it seems to be lacking from what i see from old questions here, and also seems unsupported.
PyLog, which seems newer but also has some activity. Although i don't know how good it is.
What is the recommended way of using Python to communicate with SWI-prolog?
Are there perhaps other ways to accomplish this?
Maybe with another prolog engine?
I'm stuck with the Prolog language and Python because I know them best, so that would be necessary (I know for instance there are also tools for Java).
I've personally used PySWIP successfully. Here's a link to a project I did for my AI class in university in which I used PySWIP.
I think the difference is that PySWIP is a bridge (just send queries to a Prolog database and get responses) whereas PyLog seems to be an implementation of Prolog (or a built-in Prolog engine) in Python, with abstractions on Prolog code using objects.
I have no particular recommendation for you. Choose whichever you deem will suit your project best. Consider the licenses under which these libraries are published if you will need to worry about your code's license.
Let me explain what I'm trying to achieve. In the past while working on Java platform, I used to write Java codes(say, to push or pull data from MySQL database etc.) then create a war file which essentially bundles all the class files, supporting files etc and put it under a servlet container like Tomcat and this becomes a web service and can be invoked from any platform.
In my current scenario, I've majority of work being done in Java, however the Natural Language Processing(NLP)/Machine Learning(ML) part is being done in Python using the NLTK, Scipy, Numpy etc libraries. I'm trying to use the services of this Python engine in existing Java code. Integrating the Python code to Java through something like Jython is not that straight-forward(as Jython does not support calling any python module which has C based extensions, as far as I know), So I thought the next option would be to make it a web service, similar to what I had done with Java web services in the past. Now comes the actual crux of the question, how do I run the ML engine as a web service and call the same from any platform, in my current scenario this happens to be Java. I tried looking in the web, for various options to achieve this and found things like CherryPy, Werkzeug etc but not able to find the right approach or any sample code or anything that shows how to invoke a NLTK-Python script and serve the result through web, and eventually replicating the functionality Java web service provides. In the Python-NLTK code, the ML engine does a data-training on a large corpus(this takes 3-4 minutes) and we don't want the Python code to go through this step every time a method is invoked. If I make it a web service, the data-training will happen only once, when the service starts and then the service is ready to be invoked and use the already trained engine.
Now coming back to the problem, I'm pretty new to this web service things in Python and would appreciate any pointers on how to achieve this .Also, any pointers on achieving the goal of calling NLTK based python scripts from Java, without using web services approach and which can deployed on production servers to give good performance would also be helpful and appreciable. Thanks in advance.
Just for a note, I'm currently running all my code on a Linux machine with Python 2.6, JDK 1.6 installed on it.
One method is to build an XML-RPC server, but you may wish to fork a new process for each connection to prevent the server from seizing up. I have written a detailed tutorial on how to go about this: https://speakerdeck.com/timclicks/case-studies-of-python-in-parallel?slide=68.
NLTK based system tends to be slow at response per request, but good throughput can be achieved given enough RAM.
I have a python program that I would like to present as a simple web application. The program currently uses sqlite for storage. I also need to distribute the whole thing to colleagues so having something standalone and easy to start would be ideal ( no install if possible). This web app is meant to be used locally , not by multiple users over a network.
Is there a suitable python framework that might fit my needs? I looked at Django so far but it seems a bit heavy handed for what I need.
Thanks for any suggestions.
I have never tried it myself, but you could try Bottle:
Bottle is a fast, simple and lightweight WSGI micro web-framework for
Python. It is distributed as a single file module and has no
dependencies other than the Python Standard Library.
try http://docs.python.org/library/simplehttpserver.html
As web frameworks are not part of the standard lib, you will have to install something in every case. I would propse to look at http://flask.pocoo.org/. It has a build in WSGI server.
Lots of choices for Python web frameworks! Another is web2py which is designed to work out of the box and allows, but doesn't require, through-the-web development. It is mature and has a strong community and is well-documented.
Tornado as a framework may be a lot more than what you're looking for. However it will meet the requirement of being a completely python based web server. http://tornadoweb.org
I generally just download the source, drop it in /tornado/ of my project and do includes there from the app.
I don't think that any web framework is specifically oriented for the use case you're talking about; They all assume they are running on a server and there's a browser on a remote machine that is accessing them.
A better approach is to think about the HTTP server you'll be using. It's probably preferable to use a server that's as easy to pack and ship as the rest of the python code you'll be using. Now most frameworks provide a 'development' server that's easy to invoke from the command line, but most of them are intended to be "easy for the developer" which often means they are restricted to a single thread. This is bad for deployment because single threaded servers will always feel a bit sluggish.
CherryPy stands out in contrast, by providing a full featured, embedded server that's easy to configure for many use cases, and is available by default with the rest of the framework. There are probably others, but I haven't used 'em.
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I have been experimenting with Appcelerator Titanum yesterday and I think it's cool when it comes to Javascript.
Python features on Appcelerator Titanum are so limited (can't use some modules for example).
My question is How can I use html & javascript as a GUI tool for a real python application ?
I am running windows 7 and i was thinking of using webkit for that purpose but couldn't know how to work with it in python.
I am planning to make a standalone executable using py2exe as I don't know if the users always have python and the appropriate modules installed.
If you're after webkit bindings for Python, look at PyQt, which includes Webkit, as well as wxWebkit (http://wxwebkit.wxcommunity.com/) if you're using wxWidgets. This lets you embed webkit in a Qt or Wxwidgets app so that you won't have to go through a browser.
If you do use this, then you can either use a web server in Python, like others have mentioned, or you can control the Webkit control directly (though I'm not sure how practical this is).
Beyond that, there's also Pyjamas Desktop (http://pyjs.org/), which lets you use Pyjamas to build the application, then run it.
pywebkitgtk might be what you are looking for.
"HOWTO Create Python GUIs using HTML" http://www.aclevername.com/articles/python-webgui/
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/07/how-to-build-a-desktop-wysiwyg-editor-with-webkit-and-html-5.ars
But I'm not sure if it runs on Windows.
PyQt and Webkit would work on Windows.
http://www.rkblog.rk.edu.pl/w/p/webkit-pyqt-rendering-web-pages/
Here is a nice PyCon talk on the subject.
So how can I use html & javascript as a gui tool for a real python application ?
You run a web server on your desktop. For example, this: http://docs.python.org/library/simplehttpserver.html In a few lines of code you can provide a complete HTTP server that will serve your HTML and Javascript to a browser.
I am running windows 7 and i was thinking of using webkit for that purpose but couldn't know how to work with it in python actually moreover I wanna use py2exe so how can I use python + webkit to handle the gui part ?
Hard to parse that. It either indicates too much coffee or no familiarity with punctuation.
Randomly, I'll pick the following words as possibly being meaningful.
how can I use python + webkit to handle the gui part ?
You run a web server on your desktop. The web server provides html and javascript pages to a browser -- also running on your desktop.
Have you looked at htmlayout? http://terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/main.whtm
PHP Desktop is an open source project founded by Czarek Tomczak in
2012 to provide a way for developing native desktop GUI applications
using web technologies such as PHP, HTML5, JavaScript & SQLite. The
development workflow you are used to while creating web applications
remains the same. The step of turning an existing website into a
desktop application is basically a matter of copying it to the "www/"
directory.
PHP Desktop also releases Python Desktop and Ruby Desktop. It allows you to create a Windows app, that either uses the installed IE for the front-end, or uses an instance of Chrome (so definitely HTML5 support too) that is packaged with the app. It starts a local webserver, supports many databases with a PDO driver and you can layout the views in HTML and Javascript. You can download external resources like any other website/webapp, so it supports network related stuff too. The app ships with its own bare-bones version of Python, you can add libraries as desired.
I looked at all the answers before, as I had the exact same question as you, but PHP Desktop easily solved it for me.
https://code.google.com/p/phpdesktop/wiki/EmbeddingOtherScriptingLanguages
I assume you are mobilizing a web-application for cross platform access.
If so have you considered abstracting the cross platform access at the web-app presentation layer ?
Appcelerator / Webkit does not provide true native look-and-feel on mobile devices but this is where a new technology can help.
If you are thinking about real desktop applications that are multi-threaded and/or use multiple system component - forget about JavaScript. That requires a very good SDK (like PyQt4), and not a basic wrapper like Appcelerator Titanium. Note that developing such applications takes a lot of time.
Second option is to drop the desktop binding and make a web application with an advanced frontend UI made with one of JavaScript frameworks & friends (Ember, Angular... up to things like dhtmlx and alike widgets). Those can't use system components (like access some hardware), but they can provide nice services.
Take a look at pySide
I suggest using QtWebKit
And you can use PyInstaller if you want to hide the source code.
You can use TideSDK that can help you creating beautiful and unique desktop apps using your web development skills (HTML5 / CSS3 / JavaScript / Python or PHP or Ruby).
Website: http://www.tidesdk.org
Using Python in TideSDK: http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated/#!/guide/using_python
Hope that helps! :)
Is there any way to achieve the same functionality in Python, i.e., launching a script from a browser and automatically updating it from a central server location?
Run your app on Jython and use Java Web Start?
From a comment below, http://blog.pyproject.ninja/posts/2016-03-31-web-start-on-jython.html, provides a complete example.
Note that Jython is not Python- some stuff does not work, and notably Jython is only Python-2.7 compatible.
Well this is still not a full match of the features of JNLP but maybe esky is closer to what you want. It's not browser based but once your app is installed on the client it can update itself. It might also lack something in the cross-platform department so depending on your environment YMMV.
Another alternative might be the Dabo framework at dabodev.com. It's been a few years since i looked at that but it still looks like it's alive :-)
You may be able to achieve some functionality with Skulpt although it uses classless python, so its functionality is rather limited.
Well check out this python wiki page as it lays out various options.