# Matplotlib: using matplotlib in a CGI script¶

Trying to use matplotlib in a python CGI script naïvely will most likely result in the following error:

...
352, in _get_configdir
raise RuntimeError("'%s' is not a writable dir; you must set
environment variable HOME to be a writable dir "%h)
RuntimeError: '<WebServer DocumentRoot>' is not a writable dir; you must set
environment variable HOME to be a writable dir


Matplotlib needs the environment variable HOME to point to a writable directory. One way to accomplish this is to set this environment variable from within the CGI script on runtime (another way would be to modify the file but that would be not as portable). The following template can be used for a cgi that uses matplotlib to create a png image:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os,sys
import cgi
import cgitb; cgitb.enable()

# set HOME environment variable to a directory the httpd server can write to
os.environ[ 'HOME' ] = '/tmp/'

import matplotlib
# chose a non-GUI backend
matplotlib.use( 'Agg' )

import pylab

#Deals with inputing data into python from the html form
form = cgi.FieldStorage()

pylab.plot([1,2,3])

print "Content-Type: image/png\n"

# save the plot as a png and output directly to webserver
pylab.savefig( sys.stdout, format='png' )


This image can then be accessed with a URL such as: http://localhost/showpng.py

As documented,some backends will not allow the output to be sent to sys.stdout. It is possible to replace the last line with the following to work around this:

pylab.savefig( "tempfile.png", format='png' )
import shutil
shutil.copyfileobj(open("tempfile.png",'rb'), sys.stdout)


(Of course it is necessary to create and delete proper temp files to use this in production.)

Section author: AndrewStraw, Unknown[120], Unknown[121]