I'm building an ASP.NET MVC (C#) site where I want to implement STV (Single Transferable Vote) voting. I've used OpenSTV for voting scenarios before, with great success, but I've never used it programmatically.
The OpenSTV Google Code project offers a Python script that allows usage of OpenSTV from other applications:
import sys
sys.path.append("path to openstv package")
from openstv.ballots import Ballots
from openstv.ReportPlugins.TextReport import TextReport
from openstv.plugins import getMethodPlugins
(ballotFname, method, reportFname) = sys.argv[1:]
methods = getMethodPlugins("byName")
f = open(reportFname, "w")
try:
b = Ballots()
b.loadUnknown(ballotFname)
except Exception, msg:
print >> f, ("Unable to read ballots from %s" % ballotFname)
print >> f, msg
sys.exit(-1)
try:
e = methods[method](b)
e.runElection()
except Exception, msg:
print >> f, ("Unable to count votes using %s" % method)
print >> f, msg
sys.exit(-1)
try:
r = TextReport(e, outputFile=f)
r.generateReport();
except Exception, msg:
print >> f, "Unable to write report"
print >> f, msg
sys.exit(-1)
f.close()
Is there a way for me to make such a Python call from my C# ASP.NET MVC site?
If so, how?
Thanks in advance!