I use subprocess.Popen a lot to run shell commands from Python. There is no
need for a specific web2py feature.
This is the method I use whenever I need to call something:
import subprocess
def run_command(self, *args):
"""
Returns the output of a command as a tuple (output, error).
"""
p = subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
return p.communicate()
It's very simple to use:
output, error = run_command('python', 'my_script.py', 'arg1', 'arg2', ...)
This runs the command, waits for it to exit, and then you have a string
"output" for the output from the command, and a string "error" for any
error output from the command.
