How to call a Python function from Node.js

Question

I have an Express Node.js application, but I also have a machine learning algorithm to use in Python. Is there a way I can call Python functions from my Node.js application

Answer 1

I'm on node 10 and child process 1.0.2. The data from python is a byte array and has to be converted. Just another quick example of making a http request in python.

node

const process = spawn("python", ["services/request.py", "https://www.google.com"])

return new Promise((resolve, reject) =>{
    process.stdout.on("data", data =>{
        resolve(data.toString()); // <------------ by default converts to utf-8
    })
    process.stderr.on("data", reject)
})

request.py

import urllib.request
import sys

def karl_morrison_is_a_pedant():   
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(sys.argv[1])
    html = response.read()
    print(html)
    sys.stdout.flush()

karl_morrison_is_a_pedant()

p.s. not a contrived example since node's http module doesn't load a few requests I need to make