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Make Jupyter notebook fun with extensions

Yogita Kinha 21/07/2019

Jupyter notebook is an interactive web-based application used for capturing the whole computation process – developing, documenting, and executing code. Jupyter notebook is a part of the larger Jupyter project that also includes jupyter hub and jupyter lab. Jupyter notebook supports kernels in many languages like python, pyspark, R, Julia among a few. Jupyter notebooks are great for multiple functionalities and can be made more fun and useful by adding Jupyter notebook extensions. These extensions are plug-ins that can be easily added to your Jupyter notebooks. These extensions are mostly written in Javascript and will be loaded locally in your browser. The best way to install them is to use Jupyter NbExtensions Configurator. It will add a Nbextensions tab to let you enable/disable a functionality:

Installation:

Installing using pip: pip install jupyter_nbextensions_configurator jupyter nbextensions_configurator enable –user Installing using Conda: conda install -c conda-forge jupyter_nbextensions_configurator Launch a jupyter notebook, Nbextensions would be added on the home page (see above picture). A few very useful extensions are: Collapsible Heading: Very useful for large notebooks, click on the heading arrow to collapse and expand the content underneath.

Code folding: Again for large notebooks, it is a very useful extension to collapse the code and see the output only.

Variable inspector: The variable inspector shows the names of all variables created in the notebook, with their type, size, shape, and value.

Table of Content: Just like a word doc’s table of content, ToC in notebook facilitates easier navigation and tracking of all the cells.

Gist-it: Using this extension, you can publish the current notebook as a gist.

Execute time: This extension displays when each cell has been executed and how long it took.

There are many more extensions like Code-pretify extension which reformats and prettifies the contents of code cells, AutoSaveTime can set the notebook autosave interval, additionally, you can also set time interval to autosave your code. All the extension you enable will be visible in toolbar.