Running Python Code in .NET Environment without Installing Python

Question

Is it possible to productionize Python code in a .NET/C# environment without installing Python and without converting the Python code to C#, i.e. just deploy the code as is?

I know installing the Python language would be the reasonable thing to do but my hesitation is that I just don't want to introduce a new language to my production environment and deal with its testing and maintenance complications, since I don't have enough manpower who know Python to take care of these issues.

I know IronPython is built on CLR, but don't know how exactly it can be hosted and maintained inside .NET. Does it enable one to treat PYthon code as a "package" that can be imported into C# code, without actually installing Python as a standalone language? How can IronPython make my life easier in this situation? Can python.net give me more leverage?

Answer 1

As I mentioned in the comments, the right and better way to do it is to create Restful services over your Python code and make http-requests from the C# code. I don't know how much you know about web-frameworks in Python but there are tons of them that you can use. For your need, I would suggest Flask which is light-weight micro web-framework to create Restful web services.

This is very simple Flask web-service for the example: (you can check a running version of it here, I hosted it on pythonOnEverywhere)

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def hello_world():
    return 'Hello from Flask!'

@app.route('/math/add/<int:num1>/<int:num2>')
def add(num1, num2):
    return '%d' % (num1+num2)

This simple service, adds two number and returns the sum of them.

And C# Code:

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

public class Program
{
    // Always use HttpClient as a singleton object
    public static HttpClient _httpClient = new HttpClient() { BaseAddress = new Uri("http://al1b.pythonanywhere.com") } ;
    public async static Task Main()
    {

        var num1 = 1;
        var num2 = 4;

        Console.WriteLine("Making http-request wait ...\r\n");      

        var mathAddResult = await _httpClient.GetAsync($"/math/add/{num1}/{num2}");

        // 200 = OK
        if(mathAddResult.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
        {   
            Console.WriteLine(await mathAddResult.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());
        }
    }
}

The output:

Making http-request wait ... 

5

The running version of code above is now runnable on .NET Fiddle.

TL;DR:

For understanding and learning Flask, take a look on its documentions. (It's short and well). I'm sure you will have complex web-services, such as accepting complex or pocco objects as your web-service inputs and returning complex objects (as json) as web-serivce results.

In that case you need to know how Flask jsonify works, This link will tell you how.

Ok, on the other hand, in your C# application you will have those complex objects and scenarios as well. You need to know how to serialize, deseriaze and etc.

Microsoft did a great job for its tutorials here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/web-api/overview/advanced/calling-a-web-api-from-a-net-client

and

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.http.httpclient?view=netframework-4.8