I have a web server which I have developed an application on using php and SQL,  mainly picked php as I am more comfortable with it.
In short the application automates some of our network tasks .
As part of this I have automated some solarwinds tasks and the library orionsdk doesnt have a php library so I have used python.
It's all working fine but I really need to run these python scripts from my browser .
I have considered using php shell exec and got my python scripts to accept args so I can run them and parse the output.
I know I could also use flask or django but worry I will have a flask app to maintain aswell as a php app.
I think the question is what the best way to achieve this or any way which I haven't mentioned .
Any help would be very much appreciated
So you want PHP to communicate with Python and you've already mentioned using shell commands and http traffic.
I can imagine you could also achieve something similar by connecting up both PHP and Python up to the same database. In that case PHP could write a record in a table and Python could pick that up and do something with the data in there. Python could be either be a long-running process or fired off by a cronjob in this case. If a database seems overkill you could also write a file to some place on disk, which Python can pick up.
Personally I'd go for the shell exec approach if you want to keep it light weight and for a API connection if you want to have a more robust solution which needs to be expanded later on.
Best way to run python script alongside php and html