Running Java Application using Popen

Question

I am running tika on my Linux server, and I want to run it using python (subprocess.Popen)

However, I have a non-root access, so I only have a local java installation. Every time I need to set the java home and path for each session :

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07/bin/java

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07/bin

Then I can run tika from the java directory and save the output to some file out_txt.txt

curl www.vit.org/downloads/doc/tariff.doc | java -jar tika-app-1.3.jar --text >out_txt.txt

So, I need to know how to use Popen to:

1. set the java home and path using Popen
2. write Tika output to the file out_txt.txt

Answer 1

1) you could:

• use os.setenv('JAVA_HOME', '/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07') before Popen, that would set the environment variable for all futre invocations. or for PATH:

  os.environ['PATH'] += ":/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07"
  

• pass an environment dict to Popen as env:

  environ = os.environ.copy()
  environ['JAVA_HOME'] = '/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07'
  environ['PATH'] += ':/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07/bin'
  subprocess.Popen(args, env=environ)
  

2)

• open the file for writing and pass it to Popen as stdout (and optionally stderr):

  output = open(outfile, 'wb')
  subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=output, stderr=output)
  

• leave it to the shell by passing shell=True to Popen:

  Popen("curl www.vit.org/downloads/doc/tariff.doc | java -jar tika-app-1.3.jar --text >out_txt.txt", shell=True)