Yet another approach: use Pyro (Python remoting objects).
Pyro basically allows you to publish Python object instances as services that can be called remotely. I have used Pyro for the exact purpose you describe, and I found it to work very well.
By default, a Pyro server daemon accepts connections from everywhere. To limit this, either use a connection validator (see documentation), or supply host="127.0.0.1" to the Daemon constructor to only listen for local connections.
Example code taken from the Pyro documentation:
Server
import Pyro.core
class JokeGen(Pyro.core.ObjBase):
def __init__(self):
Pyro.core.ObjBase.__init__(self)
def joke(self, name):
return "Sorry "+name+", I don't know any jokes."
Pyro.core.initServer()
daemon=Pyro.core.Daemon()
uri=daemon.connect(JokeGen(),"jokegen")
print "The daemon runs on port:",daemon.port
print "The object's uri is:",uri
daemon.requestLoop()
Client
import Pyro.core
# you have to change the URI below to match your own host/port.
jokes = Pyro.core.getProxyForURI("PYROLOC://localhost:7766/jokegen")
print jokes.joke("Irmen")
Another similar project is RPyC. I have not tried RPyC.