Building a Custom Widget - Email widget¶
This tutorial shows how to build a simple email widget using the TypeScript widget cookiecutter: https://github.com/jupyter-widgets/widget-ts-cookiecutter
Setup a dev environment¶
Install conda with miniconda¶
We recommend installing conda
using miniconda
.
Instructions are available on the conda installation documentation.
Create a new conda environment with the dependencies¶
Next create a conda environment that includes:
the latest release of JupyterLab or the classic notebook
cookiecutter: the tool you will use to bootstrap the custom widget
NodeJS: the JavaScript runtime you'll use to compile the web assets (e.g., TypeScript, CSS) for the custom widget
To create the environment, execute the following command:
conda create -n ipyemail -c conda-forge jupyterlab cookiecutter nodejs yarn python
Then activate the environment with:
conda activate ipyemail
Create a new project¶
Initialize the project from a cookiecutter¶
It is usually recommended to bootstrap the widget with cookiecutter
.
Two cookiecutter projects are currently available:
widget-ts-cookiecutter: To create a custom widget in TypeScript
widget-cookiecutter: To create a custom widget in JavaScript
In this tutorial, we are going to use the TypeScript cookiecutter, as many of the existing widgets are written in TypeScript.
To generate the project, run the following command:
cookiecutter https://github.com/jupyter-widgets/widget-ts-cookiecutter
When prompted, enter the desired values as follows:
author_name []: Your Name
author_email []: your@name.net
github_project_name []: ipyemail
github_organization_name []:
python_package_name [ipyemail]:
npm_package_name [ipyemail]: jupyter-email
npm_package_version [0.1.0]:
project_short_description [A Custom Jupyter Widget Library]: An Custom Email Widget
Change to the directory the cookiecutter created and list the files:
cd ipyemail
ls
You should see a list like the following:
appveyor.yml css examples ipyemail.json MANIFEST.in pytest.ini readthedocs.yml setup.cfg src tsconfig.json
codecov.yml docs ipyemail LICENSE.txt package.json README.md setupbase.py setup.py tests webpack.config.js
Build and install the widget for development¶
The generated project should already contain a README.md
file with the instructions to develop the widget locally.
Since the widget contains a Python part, you need to install the package in editable mode:
python -m pip install -e .
You also need to enable the widget frontend extension.
If you are using JupyterLab 3.x:
# link your development version of the extension with JupyterLab
jupyter labextension develop . --overwrite
# rebuild extension Typescript source after making changes
yarn run build
It is also possible to rebuild the widget automatically when there is a new change, using the watch
script:
# watch the source directory in one terminal, automatically rebuilding when needed
yarn run watch
If you are using JupyterLab 2.x, you will need to install the @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager
extension manually:
# install the widget manager to display the widgets in JupyterLab
jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager --no-build
# install the local extension
jupyter labextension install .
If you are using the Classic Notebook:
jupyter nbextension install --sys-prefix --symlink --overwrite --py ipyemail
jupyter nbextension enable --sys-prefix --py ipyemail
Testing the installation¶
At this point, you should be able to open a notebook and create a new ExampleWidget
.
To test it, execute the following in a terminal:
# if you are using the classic notebook
jupyter notebook
# if you are using JupyterLab
jupyter lab
And open examples/introduction.ipynb
.
By default, the widget displays the string Hello World
with a colored background:
The next steps will walk you through how to modify the existing code to transform the widget into an email widget.
Implementing the widget¶
The widget framework is built on top of the Comm framework (short for communication). The Comm framework is a framework that allows the kernel to send/receive JSON messages to/from the front end (as seen below).
To learn more about how the underlying Widget protocol works, check out the Low Level Widget documentation.
To create a custom widget, you need to define the widget both in the browser and in the Python kernel.
Python Kernel¶
DOMWidget, ValueWidget and Widget¶
To define a widget, you must inherit from the DOMWidget
, ValueWidget
, or Widget
base class. If you intend for your widget to be displayed, you'll want to inherit from DOMWidget
. If you intend for your widget to be used as an input for interact, you'll want to inherit from ValueWidget
. Your widget should inherit from ValueWidget
if it has a single obvious output (for example, the output of an IntSlider
is clearly the current value of the slider).
Both the DOMWidget
and ValueWidget
classes inherit from the Widget
class. The Widget
class is useful for cases in which the widget is not meant to be displayed directly in the notebook, but instead as a child of another rendering environment. Here are some examples:
If you wanted to create a three.js widget (three.js is a popular WebGL library), you would implement the rendering window as a
DOMWidget
and any 3D objects or lights meant to be rendered in that window asWidget
If you wanted to create a widget that displays directly in the notebook for usage with
interact
(likeIntSlider
), you should multiple inherit from bothDOMWidget
andValueWidget
.If you wanted to create a widget that provides a value to
interact
but does not need to be displayed, you should inherit from onlyValueWidget
_view_name¶
Inheriting from the DOMWidget does not tell the widget framework what front end widget to associate with your back end widget.
Instead, you must tell it yourself by defining specially named trait attributes, _view_name
, _view_module
, and _view_module_version
(as seen below) and optionally _model_name
and _model_module
.
First let's rename ipyemail/example.py
to ipyemail/widget.py
.
In ipyemail/widget.py
, replace the example code with the following:
from ipywidgets import DOMWidget, ValueWidget, register
from traitlets import Unicode, Bool, validate, TraitError
from ._frontend import module_name, module_version
@register
class Email(DOMWidget, ValueWidget):
_model_name = Unicode('EmailModel').tag(sync=True)
_model_module = Unicode(module_name).tag(sync=True)
_model_module_version = Unicode(module_version).tag(sync=True)
_view_name = Unicode('EmailView').tag(sync=True)
_view_module = Unicode(module_name).tag(sync=True)
_view_module_version = Unicode(module_version).tag(sync=True)
value = Unicode('example@example.com').tag(sync=True)
In ipyemail/__init__.py
, change the import from:
from .example import ExampleWidget
To:
from .widget import Email
sync=True traitlets¶
Traitlets is an IPython library for defining type-safe properties on configurable objects. For this tutorial you do not need to worry about the configurable piece of the traitlets machinery. The sync=True
keyword argument tells the widget framework to handle synchronizing that value to the browser. Without sync=True
, attributes of the widget won't be synchronized with the front-end.
Please keep in mind that mutable types will not necessarily be synced when they are modified. For example appending an element to a list
will not cause the changes to sync. Instead a new list must be created and assigned to the trait for the changes to be synced.
An alternative would be to use a third-party library such as spectate, which tracks changes to mutable data types.
Other traitlet types¶
Unicode, used for _view_name
, is not the only Traitlet type, there are many more some of which are listed below:
Any
Bool
Bytes
CBool
CBytes
CComplex
CFloat
CInt
CLong
CRegExp
CUnicode
CaselessStrEnum
Complex
Dict
DottedObjectName
Enum
Float
FunctionType
Instance
InstanceType
Int
List
Long
Set
TCPAddress
Tuple
Type
Unicode
Union
Not all of these traitlets can be synchronized across the network, only the JSON-able traits and Widget instances will be synchronized.
Front end (TypeScript)¶
Models and views¶
The IPython widget framework front end relies heavily on Backbone.js. Backbone.js is an MVC (model view controller) framework. Widgets defined in the back end are automatically synchronized with Backbone.js Model
in the front end. Each front end Model
handles the widget data and state, and can have any number of associate View
s. In the context of a widget the Views
are what render objects for the user to interact with, and the Model handles communication with the Python objects.
On the first state push from python the synced traitlets are added automatically. The _view_name
trait that you defined earlier is used by the widget framework to create the corresponding Backbone.js view and link that view to the model.
The TypeScript cookiecutter generates a file src/widget.ts
. Open the file and rename ExampleModel
to EmailModel
and ExampleView
to EmailView
:
export class EmailModel extends DOMWidgetModel {
defaults() {
return {...super.defaults(),
_model_name: EmailModel.model_name,
_model_module: EmailModel.model_module,
_model_module_version: EmailModel.model_module_version,
_view_name: EmailModel.view_name,
_view_module: EmailModel.view_module,
_view_module_version: EmailModel.view_module_version,
value : 'Hello World'
};
}
static serializers: ISerializers = {
...DOMWidgetModel.serializers,
// Add any extra serializers here
}
static model_name = 'EmailModel';
static model_module = MODULE_NAME;
static model_module_version = MODULE_VERSION;
static view_name = 'EmailView';
static view_module = MODULE_NAME;
static view_module_version = MODULE_VERSION;
}
export class EmailView extends DOMWidgetView {
render() {
this.el.classList.add('custom-widget');
this.value_changed();
this.model.on('change:value', this.value_changed, this);
}
value_changed() {
this.el.textContent = this.model.get('value');
}
}
Render method¶
Now, override the base render
method of the view to define custom rendering logic.
A handle to the widget's default DOM element can be acquired via this.el
. The el
property is the DOM element associated with the view.
In src/widget.ts
, define the _emailInput
attribute:
export class EmailView extends DOMWidgetView {
private _emailInput: HTMLInputElement;
render() {
// .....
}
// .....
}
Then, add the following logic for the render
method:
render() {
this._emailInput = document.createElement('input');
this._emailInput.type = 'email';
this._emailInput.value = 'example@example.com';
this._emailInput.disabled = true;
this.el.appendChild(this._emailInput);
this.el.classList.add('custom-widget');
this.value_changed();
this.model.on('change:value', this.value_changed, this);
},
Test¶
First, run the following command to recreate the frontend bundle:
npm run build
If you use JupyterLab, you might want to use jlpm
as the npm client. jlpm
uses yarn
under the hood as the package manager. The main difference compared to npm
is that jlpm
will generate a yarn.lock
file for the dependencies, instead of package-lock.json
. With jlpm
the command is:
jlpm run build
After reloading the page, you should be able to display your widget just like any other widget now:
from ipyemail import Email
Email()
Making the widget stateful¶
There is not much that you can do with the above example that you can't do with the IPython display framework. To change this, you will make the widget stateful. Instead of displaying a static "example@example.com" email address, it will display an address set by the back end. First you need to add a traitlet in the back end. Use the name of value
to stay consistent with the rest of the widget framework and to allow your widget to be used with interact.
We want to be able to avoid the user to write an invalid email address, so we need a validator using traitlets.
from ipywidgets import DOMWidget, ValueWidget, register
from traitlets import Unicode, Bool, validate, TraitError
from ._frontend import module_name, module_version
@register
class Email(DOMWidget, ValueWidget):
_model_name = Unicode('EmailModel').tag(sync=True)
_model_module = Unicode(module_name).tag(sync=True)
_model_module_version = Unicode(module_version).tag(sync=True)
_view_name = Unicode('EmailView').tag(sync=True)
_view_module = Unicode(module_name).tag(sync=True)
_view_module_version = Unicode(module_version).tag(sync=True)
value = Unicode('example@example.com').tag(sync=True)
disabled = Bool(False, help="Enable or disable user changes.").tag(sync=True)
# Basic validator for the email value
@validate('value')
def _valid_value(self, proposal):
if proposal['value'].count("@") != 1:
raise TraitError('Invalid email value: it must contain an "@" character')
if proposal['value'].count(".") == 0:
raise TraitError('Invalid email value: it must contain at least one "." character')
return proposal['value']
Accessing the model from the view¶
To access the model associated with a view instance, use the model
property of the view. get
and set
methods are used to interact with the Backbone model. get
is trivial, however you have to be careful when using set
. After calling the model set
you need call the view's touch
method. This associates the set
operation with a particular view so output will be routed to the correct cell. The model also has an on
method, which allows you to listen to events triggered by the model (like value changes).
Rendering model contents¶
By replacing the string literal with a call to model.get
, the view will now display the value of the back end upon display. However, it will not update itself to a new value when the value changes.
export class EmailView extends DOMWidgetView {
render() {
this._emailInput = document.createElement('input');
this._emailInput.type = 'email';
this._emailInput.value = this.model.get('value');
this._emailInput.disabled = this.model.get('disabled');
this.el.appendChild(this._emailInput);
}
private _emailInput: HTMLInputElement;
}
Dynamic updates¶
To get the view to update itself dynamically, register a function to update the view's value when the model's value
property changes. This can be done using the model.on
method. The on
method takes three parameters, an event name, callback handle, and callback context. The Backbone event named change
will fire whenever the model changes. By appending :value
to it, you tell Backbone to only listen to the change event of the value
property (as seen below).
export class EmailView extends DOMWidgetView {
render() {
this._emailInput = document.createElement('input');
this._emailInput.type = 'email';
this._emailInput.value = this.model.get('value');
this._emailInput.disabled = this.model.get('disabled');
this.el.appendChild(this._emailInput);
// Python -> JavaScript update
this.model.on('change:value', this._onValueChanged, this);
this.model.on('change:disabled', this._onDisabledChanged, this);
}
private _onValueChanged() {
this._emailInput.value = this.model.get('value');
}
private _onDisabledChanged() {
this._emailInput.disabled = this.model.get('disabled');
}
private _emailInput: HTMLInputElement;
}
This allows us to update the value from the Python kernel to the views. Now to get the value updated from the front-end to the Python kernel (when the input is not disabled) we set the value on the frontend model using model.set
and then sync the frontend model with the Python object using model.save_changes
.
export class EmailView extends DOMWidgetView {
render() {
this._emailInput = document.createElement('input');
this._emailInput.type = 'email';
this._emailInput.value = this.model.get('value');
this._emailInput.disabled = this.model.get('disabled');
this.el.appendChild(this._emailInput);
// Python -> JavaScript update
this.model.on('change:value', this._onValueChanged, this);
this.model.on('change:disabled', this._onDisabledChanged, this);
// JavaScript -> Python update
this._emailInput.onchange = this._onInputChanged.bind(this);
}
private _onValueChanged() {
this._emailInput.value = this.model.get('value');
}
private _onDisabledChanged() {
this._emailInput.disabled = this.model.get('disabled');
}
private _onInputChanged() {
this.model.set('value', this._emailInput.value);
this.model.save_changes();
}
private _emailInput: HTMLInputElement;
}
Test¶
To instantiate a new widget:
email = Email(value='john.doe@domain.com', disabled=False)
email
To get the value of the widget:
email.value
To set the value of the widget:
email.value = 'jane.doe@domain.com'
The end result should look like the following:
Learn more¶
As we have seen in this tutorial, starting from a cookiecutter project is really useful to quickly prototype a custom widget.
Two cookiecutter projects are currently available:
widget-ts-cookiecutter: To create a custom widget in TypeScript
widget-cookiecutter: To create a custom widget in JavaScript
If you want to learn more about building custom widgets, you can also check out the rich ecosystem of third-party widgets: