Can an eclipse plugin invoke an external python script?

Question

My intention is to develop an eclipse plugin (I will explain why I am sticking on to eclipse plugin.), that will execute a python script at a specific location (say C:\MyProject\testscript.py).

I am interested in getting responses, from those who have already tried out anything similar, on whether this approach will work.

Why Eclipse Plugin?
I am trying to listen to a notification from a Server. Although the server exposes Plain java APIs, the listening mechanism is not provided as plain java api. But using the eclipse plugins provided by the server, I can see the notifications in the eclipse UI.

Answer 1

Yes,it is possible

Sample code snippet

// Python script "test.py" is executed from an eclipse plugin

public class SampleHandler extends AbstractHandler {

/**
 * The constructor.
 */
public SampleHandler() {
}

/**
 * the command has been executed, so extract extract the needed information
 * from the application context.
 */
public Object execute(ExecutionEvent event) throws ExecutionException {
    IWorkbenchWindow window = HandlerUtil.getActiveWorkbenchWindowChecked(event);
    MessageDialog.openInformation(
            window.getShell(),
            "First",
            "Hello, Eclipse world");

    try
    {
        Runtime r = Runtime.getRuntime();

        String pythonScriptPath = "D:\\python-samples\\test.py";
        Process p = r.exec("python " + pythonScriptPath);

        BufferedReader bfr = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
        String line = "";
        while((line = bfr.readLine()) != null) {
        // display each output line form python script
        System.out.println(line);
    }
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
    String cause = e.getMessage();
    if (cause.equals("python: not found"))
        System.out.println("No python interpreter found.");
    }
    return null;
}

}

Answer 2

I suggest trying to use Jython to bridge from Java (the Eclipse plugin) to your Python. See also Calling Python in Java? (and possibly Invoking python from Java and/or How to execute Python script from Java?)