Open Google Colab notebook from URL

Question

I have a Python file available under some URL, for example

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/messa/d19ad7fd4dc0f95df9caf984caef127c/raw/4d0daebdcfcf16ea3b7914ee6186bd98dbfb3c20/demo.py

In reality it will not be gist but some courseware/homework review software.

How can I open such URL using Google Colab so I can for example run the Python code?

I know I can build colab URL for Github gists or repositories, but can I do it for any arbitrary URL?

What are you trying to do? You can of course !wget a URL as that, but it seems like there is some larger workflow you are trying to support... — Bob Smith
– Bob Smith, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 20:33
@BobSmith You would have to open new notebook and type !wget or copy-paste the code or something. But I want the code to just appear in the new Colab notebook, without doing anything more than clicking on a link. — Messa
– Messa, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 20:37
The simplest way is to put the code in a notebook and then share a link to the notebook. What excludes that approach? Are you seeking a way to convert a .py file into a notebook? — Bob Smith
– Bob Smith, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 20:53
I want to do it automatically. This would be ok it Colab had API for creating new notebook. (What I can do right now is to use Github API to create gist and then generate Colab URL for that gist, because Colab supports Github gists/repos, but that’s not very nice.) — Messa
– Messa, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 21:01
Imagine you have dozens of homework submissions in form of small python files in some web app. I would like to provide a way to run them in Colab as easy and quick as possible. Just click somewhere and open that file in Colab. Or possibly in some Colab alternative. — Messa
– Messa, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 21:03

Raniere Silva · Accepted Answer · 2023-06-27 13:42:37Z

15

There is currently no way to do what you are asking for – to construct a URL that will cause Colab to automatically load the contents of a .py file at a particular URL into a new Colab notebook.

The closest thing to this is to host a notebook on github, and then use a Colab url to open it: (updated based on https://colab.research.google.com/github/googlecolab/colabtools/blob/main/notebooks/colab-github-demo.ipynb#scrollTo=K-NVg7RjyeTk) e.g.

http://github.com/username/repository/path/to/notebook.ipynb can be opened in Colab using http://colab.research.google.com/github/username/repository/blob/main/path/to/notebook.ipynb
http://gist.github.com/username/hash/filename.ipynb can be opened in Colab using http://colab.research.google.com/gist/username/hash/filename.ipynb

edited Jun 27, 2023 at 13:42

Raniere Silva

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answered Sep 4, 2018 at 1:31

jakevdp

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1 Comment

Paloha Over a year ago

As of June 2021, it seems it is still not possible to open Jupyter notebook files (.ipynb) from an URL in Google Colab. Here is a Feature Request in the Google Colab's repo. Chip in with your votes there so the issue gets some visibility.

Anyon · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-21 19:37:44Z

0

There is an option now in the google colab to directly add a github link of a jupyter notebook. That will open the notebook in the google colab.

Open Notebook >> Github >> paste the link in the dialog box.

To open a notebook of your private repository, you can now integrate your github profile to google colab as well.

answered Jan 21 at 19:37

Anyon

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