Simple PHP calling Python script - Call not working

I've got a simple localhost website with a php page that has some buttons on it that call python scripts.

I can run it locally and the output works so standalone the scrip is fine. The issue is with the import function. Whenever I add an import, it breaks

I had it workining on an older laptop with a previous PHP and Python version.

Any thoughts

Here is the php

<?php
 $command = escapeshellcmd("/usr/bin/python3 test-py.py");
 $output = shell_exec($command);
 echo $output;
 ?>

here is the simple python whois to a output file

import sys
import whois

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
    print("Usage: python whois_ip.py <ip_address>")
    sys.exit(1)

ip_address = sys.argv[1]
w = whois.whois(ip_address)

with open("output.txt", "w") as f:
f.write(str(w))

print("WHOIS lookup results written to output.txt")

My questions are 1 Any thoughts why the import function no longer works? Could it be a permissions issue with importing libraries? 2 My PHP.ini has disabled_functions = "" (so nothing is disabled right?) 3 Is there something special about PHP 8.2.5 and Python 3.9.6 that I should be aware of?

Appreciate any and all help on this. Thanks

I have found my solution and sharing here.

Inside my XAMPP config file, there is the httpd.conf where you set the user. Mine was set to daemon. I changed it to my local username and staff is the group. That allows the extra functions of my script to work.

Sharing here for others that may have similar issues.

In short, it was a permissions issue with the user that was running httpd