{
I've been experimenting with IronPython of late trying to get the gestalt of Python as a language. It occurred to me that something I had been thinking about for a while as a web project would make sense as an Iron Python project so I dabbled a bit.
The idea I had was a command line type application that approximated commands going to a windows shell and sent the results back to the user. It's a part of a larger suspicion that I've had: that command lines are crisp, efficient user interfaces that are easy to lose sight of because it's not a natural way of thinking on the web.
The screen shots tell you the basic story: you open your browser to nothing but an underlined textbox after which you type your command and press the enter key.
The client code is pretty straight forward - I've become disillusioned with YUI and moved back to using Prototype:
function runCommand(cmd){
var request = new Ajax.Request(
'eruServer.aspx',
{
parameters:'cmd=' + cmd,
onComplete: handleResult
}
);
}
function handleResult(response){
$('loaderImage').style.visibility = 'hidden';
var cmdResult = response.responseText;
$('stdoutDiv').innerHTML = '<pre>' + cmdResult + '</pre>';
}
So that's all pretty simple, on the server processing the request is equally simple in IronPython.
from System.Diagnostics import *
from System.IO import *
def Page_Load(sender, e):
cmd = Request.cmd
p = Process()
p.StartInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe"
p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = 0
p.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = 1
p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = 1
p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = 1
p.Start()
myOut = p.StandardInput
myIn = p.StandardOutput
myOut.WriteLine(cmd)
p.StandardInput.Flush()
p.StandardInput.Close()
output = myIn.ReadToEnd()
p.StandardOutput.Close()
p.Dispose()
Response.Write(Server.HtmlEncode(output))
The web project is fairly small - go ahead and download it here. If you have any improvement, let me know - I'm not sure how to start this as an "open source" affair but it would be a great solution as a light weight tool for remotely operating on a server.
Oh yeah, security: I was thinking of simple NTFS permissions on the files along with Windows Security on the website. Should do the trick...
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