Show HN: A tool to convert Jupyter notebooks to beautiful blogs

https://github.com/hemanta212/blogger-cli

by hemanta212 • 7 years ago

150 37 7 years ago

Neat! Anyone working on projects to improve the share-ability, code review, version control, or web rendering of Jupyter notebooks, feel free to reach out to me when looking for an enthusiastic early user. Jupyter has been a game changer for my productivity as a data scientist, but I still struggle with something that seems as simple as "what's the best way to expose this to other people easily without having to set up a self-hosted nbviewer".

amrrs• 7 years ago

Is it tough to manually convert the md and use a CMS like Ghost or Hugo for website?

Alternatively, exporting HTML and publishing can also help right?

I'm curious why did you say so. Moreover did you check the recently released `voila` package that lets you publish Jupyter notebooks?

the_watcher5• 7 years ago

There are a bunch of ways that make it _possible_ to do all of this. What's really missing is a way to make it as easy as committing code to Github repo without having to do anything more than install a Github extension.

Right now, I do my work in a notebook, it's automatically converted to a Markdown file (for code review), and I use nbconvert to generate static html, which gets deployed to an internal docs site. I've also been tinkering with ReviewNB, which is trying to make notebook review look like code review, but it's separate from Github and is still fairly unpolished (but very promising!).

Ideally, the experience could be something like: * Install Github extension that offers a notebook review tab and automatically converts notebooks to a static HTML file that can be served from a url directly accessible from Github

I can think of a bunch of challenges involved in doing something like the above, but my experience working somewhere that offered a tool that allowed me to literally click one button within my notebook and have a shareable url that contained my notebook and the ability to comment line-by-line taught me that this massively unblocks data scientists, who will otherwise end up copy/pasting stuff into documents just to deliver things to partners faster.

the_watcher5• 7 years ago

By the way, voila looks very promising as well, thanks for the pointer.

lhnz• 7 years ago

Two projects I've been watching with interest are https://kyso.io/for-teams and http://reviewnb.com.

the_watcher5• 7 years ago

ReviewNB is very promising! I just wish it could live within Github (my idea is something like how Zenhub reorganizes issues into a Kanban board - add a tab that only allows viewing of ipynb files), since right now I have to kind of cajole people to review notebooks on their site.

AlexSolution• 7 years ago

https://github.com/mwouts/jupytext looks like something you might enjoy. I'm not affiliated with the project in any way.

dbecker• 7 years ago

If you send me an email (dan@kaggle.com) I'd love to set up a time to show you some mockups that may be the solution you are looking for.

adsodemelk• 7 years ago

We are developing a Notebook like interface for SQL https://uktechdata.count.co/ https://stackoverflow.count.co/

Welcome to get your thoughts on this.

fifnir• 7 years ago

Nice, have you looked into jupyter-themes? I've played with it a bit to make a similar notebooks-->static project and it's really great!

madenine• 7 years ago

Cool, but I would rather use a better supported static site generator with an ipynb plugin (ie, https://github.com/danielfrg/pelican-ipynb) than a tool just for notebooks.

Especially because this looks like an nbconvert workflow under the hood.

hemanta2125• 7 years ago

Especially because this looks like an nbconvert workflow under the hood.

It is, however I convert it to the most basic html and add custom css and js to it. So that I can change it to whatever I want. I don't see any problem with that maybe you could point some out.

I didn't go with pelican(or any static gen) because the build times will be much slow later on as blogs increase [1] as this guy faced. I like to configure a lot of things manually and don't want the burden of static gen if that make sense to you. I just needed a converter.

1. https://nipunbatra.github.io/blog/2017/Jupyter-powered-blog....

petters3• 7 years ago

I have never understood why the "In[5]" and "Out[5]" in jupyter have to be so prominent, even in a output like this.

t1amat• 7 years ago

It seems useful to denote REPL input vs output, and to be able to identify output relating to input.

petters3• 7 years ago

Sure, but the [5] feels unnecessary in a finished document like this. I mean, the output should be right after the input anyway, right?

smcmurtry• 7 years ago

The numbers track the order that the cells were executed in. So, strictly speaking, you need the numbers to be able to reproduce the output of the notebook's author. However, I think it's bad practice and pretty uncommon to publish a notebook where you need to execute the cells out of order. So most of the time the numbers aren't useful.

analog31• 7 years ago

Indeed, and the line numbers are a warning that you might have an order-of-execution bug lurking somewhere.

lallysingh• 7 years ago

Agreed. They should be (5) Input: / Output:. Where input and output are on the same level of indentation under (5).

wodenokoto2• 7 years ago

_5 is a magic variable with the value of the output from cell 5. _ refers to the last output. Super handy when working interactively.

numlocked• 7 years ago

Oh my god. I have used Jupyter notebooks for 7 years and never knew this. I just had to fire one up to verify -- and yep; exactly as described. How amazing! Thank you!

ps101• 7 years ago

You just blew my mind.

petters3• 7 years ago

I knew this, which may be handy when developing (assigning variables is superior IMO though)

But in final output like this? I don't like it.

hemanta2125• 7 years ago

People working with notebooks find it useful. You can remove it with one line of javascript though.

tluyben2• 7 years ago

Offtopic; does anyone know a tool that can turn a directory of source code into a nicely formatted PDF/PS? So with syntax highlighting etc based on the file you have and chapter index based on directory structure for instance?

jason_slack• 7 years ago

Pandoc? I haven’t used it in a while though.

bufferoverflow• 7 years ago

Did something go wrong here?

https://pykancha.github.io/test/2019/selenium_p1.html

hemanta2125• 7 years ago

Nope. It was to test my native language for unicode support.

avilay• 7 years ago

Nice. I have been using gitlab CI and a simple Python script to publish my notes (usually in markdown and Jupyter notebooks) to Gitlab pages. You can find the output on http://avilay.gitlab.io/gyan. And if you want to reuse the code you can find it in https://gitlab.com/avilay/gyan/blob/master/publisher/publish.... Will surely check out your stuff.

hemanta2125• 7 years ago

I didn't find it responsive though. Maybe not your goal but the designs are similar. Similarly I think you can import nbconvert instead of just calling from subprocess.

russfink• 7 years ago

I browsed the example link given at the GitHub site, and found this blog entry on lessons to tell your younger self. This post is amazing! All the advice rings true. Worth a read! https://pykancha.github.io/test/2018/cs-phd-lessons.html

hemanta2125• 7 years ago

Here is original link: https://nipunbatra.github.io/blog/2018/cs-phd-lessons.html

Show HN: A tool to convert Jupyter notebooks to beautiful blogs

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