Create a SimpleHTTPServer to use the python code as API

Question

Is there a way to make my python script served by a Simple HTTP server and call the script functions from the outside (in an other program) in a API philosophy?

EDIT

Ok, thanks to @upman's answer, I know that I can use SimpleXMLRPCServer for that, the question still: how to listen to the XML-RPC Server in an other program written with an other language than python (Node.js for example )

Answer 1

What you're asking for is called Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs)

You can Look into the SimpleXMLRPCServer module in Python

Server code

from SimpleXMLRPCServer import SimpleXMLRPCServer
from SimpleXMLRPCServer import SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler

# Restrict to a particular path.
class RequestHandler(SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler):
    rpc_paths = ('/RPC2','/')

# Create server
server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000),
                            requestHandler=RequestHandler)
server.register_introspection_functions()

# Register pow() function; this will use the value of
# pow.__name__ as the name, which is just 'pow'.
server.register_function(pow)

# Register a function under a different name
def adder_function(x,y):
    return x + y
server.register_function(adder_function, 'add')

# Register an instance; all the methods of the instance are
# published as XML-RPC methods (in this case, just 'div').
class MyFuncs:
    def div(self, x, y):
        return x // y

server.register_instance(MyFuncs())

# Run the server's main loop
server.serve_forever()

Python Client

import xmlrpclib

s = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://localhost:8000')
print s.pow(2,3)  # Returns 2**3 = 8
print s.add(2,3)  # Returns 5
print s.div(5,2)  # Returns 5//2 = 2

# Print list of available methods
print s.system.listMethods()

Source: https://docs.python.org/2/library/simplexmlrpcserver.html

EDIT

XMLRPC is a standard protocol, so there are implementations for it in most of the popular languages. There's a package for node as well. You can install with npm like so

npm install xmlrpc

You can make calls to the above python server with it

Javascript Client

var xmlrpc = require('xmlrpc')
var client = xmlrpc.createClient({ host: 'localhost', port: 8000, path: '/'})

// Sends a method call to the XML-RPC server
client.methodCall('pow', [2,2], function (error, value) {
  // Results of the method response
  console.log('Method response for \'anAction\': ' + value)
})

There's a jQuery implementation xmlrpc as well. So you can make RPCs from the browser.