KernelExecOnCells library

The KernelExecOnCells library provides a set of functions which enable to execute an external function, through the current Jupyter kernel, on the text of selected cells, and replace this text with the output of the external function. This scheme has been applied, for instance, to prettify code, see the code-prettify extension or to refactor it, see the 2to3 extension. These extensions are defined as simple plugins of the library. Defining such a plugin is described in the last section below.

parameters

The library uses a series of parameters, describing the configuration of the plugin. These parameters are specified as an object in the plugin source file. There are a few nbextension-wide options, configurable using the jupyter_nbextensions_configurator or by editing the notebook section config file directly. Let mod_name be the name of the plugin module (eg code_prettify, 2to3, ...) and LANG the kernel language (eg julia, python, R...). These parameters are as follows:

mod_name.add_toolbar_button: Whether to add a toolbar button to apply the kernel function to the selected cell(s), defaults to true.
mod_name.register_hotkey: Whether to register a hotkey to apply the kernel function to the selected cell(s). defaults to true.
mod_name.hotkey: Hotkey to use to apply the kernel function to the selected cell(s). defaults to Ctrl-L
mod_name.show_alerts_for_errors: Whether to show alerts for errors in the kernel calls. Defaults to true

The following give the per-kernel options as keys for the python language:

mod_name.kernel_config_map_json The value of this key is a string which can be parsed into a json object giving the config for each kernel language. Relevant keys, using the python language key:
- mod_name.kernel_config_map_json.LANG.library: string to load the kernel's prettifier libraries. For python, defaults to
```
import json
import yapf.yapflib.yapf_api
```
- mod_name.kernel_config_map_json.LANG.replacements_json_to_kernel: a list of pairs of strings, used as arguments to javascript's String.replace(from, to) to translate from a json string into a valid representation of the same string in the kernel language. Since json strings are particularly simple, this can often (as with the python language) be left as the default, an empty list.
- mod_name.kernel_config_map_json.LANG.prefix and mod_name.kernel_config_map_json.LANG.postfix: strings added as bookends to the kernel string (translated from the json string using the replacements above) to make up the kernel prettifier call kernel's prettifier libraries.
- mod_name.kernel_config_map_json.LANG.trim_formatted_text: whether to trim whitespace from the resulting cell text. Since jupyter cells don't usually have leading or trailing whitespace, the default behaviour is to trim the output text, in order to prevent the output of the kernel function adding extra newlines at the end (a common behaviour for source files, where having a trailing newline is often considered good practice).

internals

The model is essentially:

The cell text is grabbed by client-side javascript, then turned into a json string using javascript JSON.stringify. Since json-compatible strings are a particularly simple string format, which is compatible with many other programming languages without much modification (e.g. a valid json string is also a valid string in python 3, and also in python 2 when prefixed with a u), and easily converted for use in others (because of its simplicity).
Optional regex replacements are used to translate the json-format string into a valid kernel string. Python, R and javascript don't require this step, but other languages may do, so it's implemented for flexibility using the per-kernel config key replacements_json_to_kernel, which is a list of pairs of arguments to javascript String.replace.
The kernel-specific prettifier call is then composed from kernel_config.prefix + kernel_text_string + kernel_config.postfix and sent to the kernel for execution. This kernel call is expected to get the formatted cell text printed as a json-compatible string. Since most kernel languages have json packages, this should hopefully be easy to arrange. The reason for the printing text rather than simply displaying it, is that it prevents us having to translate from a kernel string representing a json string.
The callback for the kernel execution in client-side javascript parses the printed json-format string, optionally trims trailing whitespace according to the trim_formatted_text key (which defaults to true) in the per-kernel config, and then sets the cell text using the result.

The process is probably best illustrated using an example for the python implementation in code_prettify:

At nbextension load, the code_prettify.kernel_config_map_json config parameter is parsed to give the json object

{
  "python": {
    "library": "import json\nimport yapf.yapflib.yapf_api",
    "prefix": "print(json.dumps(yapf.yapflib.yapf_api.FormatCode(u",
    "postfix": ")[0]))"
  }
}

(other kernel laguages are omitted for clarity).

On kernel becoming ready, the nbextension looks up the config for the kernel's language (in our example, this is the python key of the kernel config json object above). It then sends the kernel config's library string to the kernel for execution. Thus the python implementation above executes
```
import json
import yapf.yapflib.yapf_api
```
On requesting a cell be prettified which can happen by clicking the toolbar, or with a (configurable) hotkey, the following happens:

Say the cell to be formatted contains the following ugly python code:
```
msg= 'hello '+"world"
print  (
                    msg    )
```
Then the result of the JSON.stringify call will be a string containing
```
"msg= 'hello '+\"world\"\nprint  (\n                    msg    )"
```
(note the opening and closing quotes). Concatenating this with the prefix & postfix strings from the python kernel config above, gives us the kernel code to execute. The call sent to the python kernel is therefore
```
print(json.dumps(yapf.yapflib.yapf_api.FormatCode(u"msg= 'hello '+\"world\"\nprint  (\n                    msg    )")[0]))
```
What gets 'printed' by the kernel (i.e. returned to the javascript stream callback) is the following json-format string:
```
"msg = 'hello ' + \"world\"\nprint(msg)\n"
```
The default is to trim whitepace from the returned prettified text, which results in the final prettified python code for the cell:
```
msg = 'hello ' + "world"
print(msg)
```

adding a new plugin

As an example, we will add a new plugin which reformats code sing the autopep8 module in python. Such a plugin, jupyter-autopep8 has be developed by @kenkoooo as a fork of an old version of code_prettify. Redefining it here has the advantage of using the updated and more robust architecture, in addition to the possibilty to reformat the whole notebook at once. For that extension, we just have to run import autopep8 as the library, and then call autopep8.fix_code on cells' text. Hence what we have to do is:

copy code_prettify.js to autopep8.js
update mod_name, hotkeys, button_icon
update cfg.kernel_config_map into

cfg.kernel_config_map = { // map of parameters for supported kernels
        "python": {
            "library": "import json\nimport autopep8",
            "prefix": "print(json.dumps(autopep8.fix_code(u",
            "postfix": ")))"
        }
    };

copy code_prettify.yaml into autopep8.yaml
update values in autopep8.yaml (replace code_prettify by autopep8, update hotkeys, icon, and kernel_config_map)
that's all :-)

Of course, one can also update the configuration of code_prettify using the nbextensions_configurator to use autopep8 instead of yapf to reformat python code.

History:

@jfbercher, august 14, 2016, first version [yapf_ext]
@jfbercher, august 19, 2016, second version [code_prettify]
- introduced support for R and javascript.
- changed extension name from yapf_ext to code_prettify
@jcb91, december 2016
- made addition of toolbar button & hotkey configurable
- reworked to avoid regex replacements for conversion to/from kernel string formats, in favour of json-string interchange
- made kernel-specific prettifier calls configurable, allowing support for different prettifiers & arbitrary kernels
- improved documentation
@jfbercher, december 2016-january 2017
- added a configurable shortkey to reflow the whole notebook
- extracted most of the code to build a general library of functions, kernel_exec_on_cell.js, which can be used for all nbextensions which needs to exec some code (via the current kernel) on the text from cells.
- added 2to3 as a plugin to the shared library
@jcb91, january 2017
- [code_prettify lib] use actions to avoid problems with auto-generated actions generated by keyboard_manager, which were overwriting each other.This has the added benefit of allowing the action to be used in the command palette. Also fix toolbar button removal, which was removing only the button, leaving the button group behind.
@jfbercher, january 2017
- updated documentations
- added autopep8 as a plugin to the shared library

10 KiB Raw Blame History

KernelExecOnCells library

parameters

internals

adding a new plugin

History:

10 KiB

Raw Blame History