How to programmatically create several new cells in a Jupyter notebook

Question

I want to programmatically create several cells in a Jupyter notebook.

With this function I can create one cell

def create_new_cell(contents):
    from IPython.core.getipython import get_ipython
    shell = get_ipython()
    shell.set_next_input(contents, replace=False)

But if I try to call it several times, for instance, from a for loop, like so

for x in ['a', 'b', 'c']:
    create_new_cell(x)

It will only create one cell with the last item in the list. I've tried to find if there's a "flush" function or something similar but did not succeed.

Does anyone know how to properly write several cells programmatically?

braunmagrin · Accepted Answer · 2024-04-09 15:33:25Z

24

I dug a bit more in the code of the shell.payload_manager and found out that in the current implementation of the set_next_input it does not pass the single argument to the shell.payload_manager.write_payload function. That prevents the notebook from creating several cells, since they all have the same source (the set_next_input function, in this case).

That being said, the following function works. It's basically the code from write_payload function setting the single parameter to False.

def create_new_cell(contents):
    from IPython.core.getipython import get_ipython
    shell = get_ipython()
    
    payload = dict(
        source='set_next_input',
        text=contents,
        replace=False,
    )
    shell.payload_manager.write_payload(payload, single=False)

How to use it:
Suppose you want to create a new cell with print(123) as the content. You just have to define the function above and then call the function like so:

content = 'print(123)'
create_new_cell(content)

Hope this helps someone out there ;)

edited Apr 9, 2024 at 15:33

answered Mar 4, 2019 at 16:23

braunmagrin

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7 Comments

WestCoastProjects Over a year ago

Please provide an example of putting some code into the new cell programmatically

braunmagrin Over a year ago

@WestCoastProjects You can use the function like so: create_new_cell('print(123)'). Is that what you were asking for? The contents argument can be any Python code as a string.

bluesummers Over a year ago

@braunmagrin - is there anyway to execute it?

Chris Over a year ago

Absolutely brilliant! Very, very creative, thank you.

Rub Oct 1 at 8:44

Works beautifully! i.imgur.com/83Ofq7w.gif (feel free to add it to the answer so others can 'see')

|

xingpei Pang · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-11 03:44:11Z

2

from IPython.display import display, Javascript
def add_cell(text,  type='code', direct='above'):
    text = text.replace('\n','\\n').replace("\"", "\\\"").replace("'", "\\'")

    display(Javascript('''
    var cell = IPython.notebook.insert_cell_{}("{}")
    cell.set_text("{}")
    '''.format(direct, type, text)));

for i in range(3):
    add_cell(f'# heading{i}', 'markdown')
    add_cell(f'code {i}')

codes above will add cells as follows：

edited Nov 11, 2021 at 3:44

answered Oct 28, 2021 at 8:57

xingpei Pang

1,32513 silver badges17 bronze badges

2 Comments

Javier Lopez Tomas Over a year ago

I get the error Javascript Error: IPython is not defined

displayname123 Over a year ago

I get empty output

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