web status display for long running program

Thu Feb 24 20:37:11 EST 2005

I have a command line Python program that sometimes takes a bit
(several minutes) to run.  I want to provide an optional method for an
impatient user (me!) to check the status of the program.  The type and
amount of status information doesn't fit nicely into a --verbose or
logger -- either too little or too much information at different
points.

I think an optional web page would be convenient interface.  The
Python program would listen on some port, and if queried (by me
browsing to localhost:12345 for example) would return a pretty status
display.  Hitting reload would update the status etc.

My problem is that I'm not sure how to do this:
- I don't want to embed a full web server into the application or
require any special PC setup.
- I think I know how to listen on a socket, but not sure how to send
stuff to to a web browser -- just start with <HTML>?  Or like a CGI
script with the header stuff like text/html?  (I don't care if I have
to write the HTML by hand or can use a toolkit -- not important).
- Do I need a separate thread to listen and send the HTML?  The
application is currently single threaded.  I'm confortable with
threads, but would prefer to avoid them if possible.

Or is there a better/different way of doing this?  Any general advice
or pointers to some code that already does this would be very much
appreciated.

Python 2.3, under both Linux & Windows if that makes a difference.

Thanks,
Brian.