Uploading file, parsing and displaying data For a site i am building right now, there is one component that I would want the user to upload a file, where it will be parsed (currently a python script, but can be ported to something else). The data from the parser will then be used populate a node.

what will be the best way to go around doing this? 
rules to start the parsing and feeds to import the data?
a custom php page?
or a custom mod to generate the display i want from the file uploaded in the same node?

need some guidance >,&lt;
I would create a new url where files can be uploaded. This is done with a implementation of hook_menu.

If you want to use Feeds you first need to upload the file and have it converted to rss/csv/opml etc and then use Feeds to map against a node. I would go with a custom module instead so that you can create nodes straight away instead of a "two step operation".

You can find out how to create a form that handles file uploads here. In the submit function for your form you would need to programatically create nodes from the file upload. This can be done in several ways but one is by using Entity metadata wrappers, which I find easy to work with. You can find out more about that here.

This all might sound like a lot of work and I didn't suggest a contributed module but I think in your case it would be more work to first convert the data to something readable by Feeds for example.