Matplotlib in Php

You can call Python code from within a Php script and get the return value and output like this:

exec('python mycode.py', $output, $return);
foreach ($output as $line) print "$line<br/>";

To test if everything is ok for your web server to call the python script, try: sudo -u www-data python mycode.py

From this I found out that the Python call import matplotlib was failing with the error:

RuntimeError: ‘/home/azimout’ is not a writable dir; you must set /home/azimout/.matplotlib to be a writable dir.

This can be resolved by adding the following line to your Python code before you import matplotlib: os.environ[ 'HOME' ] = '/tmp/'

Reference: http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Using_MatPlotLib_in_a_CGI_script