FPDF ImportError: No module named fpdf

Question

I'm trying to run a python script from PHP. The python script reads the contents from a text file and creates a PDF accordingly. When I run the Python script from terminal, it works perfectly and I get the required PDF as expected. But when I try to run the python script from PHP it gives me the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/amogh/server/test.py", line 3, in from fpdf import FPDF ImportError: No module named fpdf 

PHP Code:

<?php
$output = shell_exec("/home/amogh/server/test.py 2>&1");
echo $output;
?>

Python code:

#! /usr/bin/python

from fpdf import FPDF
fp =  open('downloads/boot.txt', 'r')
pdf = FPDF()
pdf.add_page()
pdf.set_font('Arial', '', 11)
line = fp.read() 
pdf.multi_cell(200, 5, line, 0, 1)
pdf.output('test.pdf', 'F')

I've installed fpdf using this command:

pip install fpdf 

I'm running my PHP files on lighttpd server. Can anyone tell me where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

It may be because of the different users running the script. I think that when you run it from php it is executed as user www-data

Maybe you ran pip from a virtualenv or for some other reason www-data user doesn't have access to fpdf module.

Edit:

Useful links from the comments:

How to install Python Package for global use by all users (incl. www-data)

http://nocurve.com/2018/04/23/running-python-script-from-php-as-www-data/