Thanks Fredrik. I gave XmlRpc a shot as you implied earlier. It works like a charm. This is how I tested quickly locally without a large web-server installed:
1. Run cgiserver.py - this takes the place of the normal web server. 2. Then run test.py to make a local xmlrpc call. ./cgi-bin/xmlrpcserver.py: from SimpleXMLRPCServer import CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler def test( theList ): return len(theList) server = CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler() server.register_function(test) server.handle_request() ./test.py: from xmlrpclib import ServerProxy, Error server = ServerProxy("http://localhost:8080/cgi-bin/xmlrpcserver.py") theList = [ 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4 ] print server.test( theList ) ./cgiserver.py: from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer from CGIHTTPServer import CGIHTTPRequestHandler serv = HTTPServer(("", 8080), CGIHTTPRequestHandler) serv.serve_forever() The code comes from a the python docs and an old list message at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2001-January/003142.html -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list