搜索名称/关键字“将 python 脚本功能添加到应用程序”

Question

I'm building an app that I want the user to be able to add functionality to by writing their own Python script.

The problem is, I'm not 100% sure how to go about it, or what such a feature would be called...

So, I was wondering if anybody knew what the feature was called or knew of some keywords that may help me find what I'm looking for.

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So... what exactly is it that I want to do? Aside from the main features of the app, I've got a textbox that I want the user to be able to write Python scripts into. Then, when the user is done writing their script, they click one of two buttons below the text box. One to save the script and the other to execute the script. To be clear, I'm not trying to build an IDE. I'm trying to build an app with the ability to allow the user to expand functionality by adding new algorithms.

Now, the idea I came up with for making this all possible was for the "execute" button to save everything as a.py file and then run it over the terminal. But that seems a bit too... "sloppy" in my mind. It seems to me there ought to be a better more "elegant" solution. And that's what I'm here asking...

Is there a more "elegant" solution that keeps everything within the app(doesn't require the app to pass the user's script through Terminal)? If so what is it called? What are some keywords I could search for to help me better understand it?

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For w/e it's worth... I'm building an image processing app that has a bunch of features; but, I can't think of every possible feature. Soooo.... why not let the users add their own algorithms to the app's library?

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I'm writing the app in Python3 on a Mac.

Answer 1

Python has a built-in function called exec which lets you run any string containing Python code.

s = """
for i in range(5):
    print(i)
"""
exec(s) # prints 0 1 2 3 4

It also lets you pass a dictionary similar to what globals() would give you to initialize a namespace and also observe how the namespace comes out the other side, which is useful if you need to retrieve a value from your user's code.

namespace = dict()
s = """
my_var = 420
hello = "world!"
"""
exec(s, dict(), namespace)
# at this point namespace == {'my_var': 420, 'hello': 'world!'}

But you should be very careful if you plan to use this. Letting users run any Python code allows for exactly the kind of consequences you'd expect. If it's just a hobby project, I'd say go ahead, knock yourself out. I've used this plenty in the past myself, where I am absolutely sure only I will be using it. But if you plan to use this on software running on anyone's computer, I'd say: don't. You don't know what kind of code people are going to be writing, but they're going to blame you once someone inevitably writes malicious code using your program.