Deploying Voilà#

The deployment docs are split up in two parts. First there is the general section, which should always be followed. Then there is a cloud service provider specific section of which one provider should be chosen.

If you are not sure where to deploy your app, we suggest Binder or Heroku. You can test deploying and serving your app without having to enter any credit card details, and with very little prior experience of deployments.

Setup an example project#

  1. Create a project directory of notebooks you wish to display. For this tutorial we will clone Voilà and treat the notebooks folder as our project root.

    git clone git@github.com:voila-dashboards/voila.git
    cd voila/notebooks/
    
  2. Add a requirements.txt file to the project directory. This file should contain all the Python dependencies your Voilà app needs to run. For this tutorial we will copy the contents of the environment.yml of Voilà. We omit xleaflet and xeus-cling because these require extra work that is beyond the scope of this guide.

    bqplot
    ipympl
    ipyvolume
    scipy
    voila
    

Cloud Service Providers#

Deployment on Binder#

Binder is one of the most accessible ways to deploy Voilà applications. The service is available at mybinder.org and is increasingly being used for reproducible research, making it an excellent fit for deploying Voilà applications.

  1. Make sure the repository is publicly available (on GitHub, Gitlab or as a gist).

  2. Follow this guide to prepare the repository. For simple deployments, steps listed in [Setup an example project] will be sufficient.

Note

Binder also supports environment.yml files and conda environments.

  1. Go to mybinder.org and enter the URL of the repository.

  2. In Path to a notebook file, select URL and use the Voilà endpoint: voila/render/path/to/notebook.ipynb

  3. Click Launch.

  4. Binder will trigger a new build if this is the first launch (or if there has been new changes since the last build). This might take a few minutes to complete. If an image is already available, the server will be able to start within a few seconds.

Customizing Voilà on Binder#

To specify different options (such as the theme and template), create a jupyter_config.json file at the root of the repository with the following content:

{
  "VoilaConfiguration": {
    "theme": "dark",
    "template": "gridstack"
  }
}

An example can be found in the voila-demo repository.

Deployment on Ploomber Cloud#

Ploomber Cloud offers a free deployment option for Voilà apps. Once you create an account and log in, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the “NEW” button

  2. In the “Framework” section, click on Voilà

  3. In the “Source code” section, click on “Upload your files”

  4. Upload your .ipynb file and requirements.txt file

  5. Click on “CREATE”

  6. Wait until deployment finishes. To see your app, click on the “VIEW” button

Full instructions for deploying Voilà apps are available here.

Deployment on Railway#

Note

Heroku.com was the suggested option for free deployment but since November 28th 2022, free product plans have been removed from the platform. The process described in this section remain valid for other services.

Railway.app is an attractive option if you want to try out deployment for free. You have limited computing hours, however the app will also automatically shutdown if it is idle.

From the template#

You can just press this button to make your own deployment from the available template. This will create a fork of the Github template that you can then fill with your Notebooks and dependencies:

Deploy on Railway

Manually#

The general steps for deployment at Railway can be found here. High level instructions, specific to Voilà can be found below:

  1. Follow the steps of the official documentation to install the Railway CLI and login on your machine.

  2. Add a file named runtime.txt to the project directory with a valid Python runtime:

    python-3.10.4
    
  3. Add a file named Procfile to the project directory with the following content if you want to show all notebooks:

    web: voila --port=$PORT --no-browser --Voila.ip=0.0.0.0
    

    Or the following if you only want to show one notebook:

    web: voila --port=$PORT --no-browser --Voila.ip=0.0.0.0 your_notebook.ipynb
    
  4. Initialize a git repo and commit your code. At minimum you need to commit your notebooks, requirements.txt, runtime.txt, and the Procfile.

    git init
    git add <your-files>
    git commit -m "my message"
    
  5. Create an Railway instance and push the code.

    railway init
    
  6. Open your web app

    railway up --detach
    

To resolve issues, it is useful to see the logs of your application. You can do this by running:

railway up

Deployment on Google App Engine#

You can deploy on Google App Engine in a “flexible” environment. This means that the underlying machine will always run. This is more expensive than a “standard” environment, which is similar to Heroku’s free option. However, Google App Engine’s “standard” environment does not support websockets, which is a requirement for voila.

The general steps for deployment at Google App Engine can be found here. High level instructions specific to Voilà can be found below:

  1. Follow the “Before you begin steps” from the official documentation to create your account, project and App Engine app.

  2. Add an app.yaml file to the project directory with the following content:

    runtime: python
    env: flex
    runtime_config:
      python_version: 3
    entrypoint: voila --port=$PORT --Voila.ip=0.0.0.0 --no-browser
    
  3. Edit the last line if you want to show only one notebook

    entrypoint: voila --port=$PORT --Voila.ip=0.0.0.0 --no-browser your_notebook.ipynb
    
  4. Deploy your app

    gcloud app deploy
    
  5. Open your app

    gcloud app browse
    

Deployment on Hugging Face Spaces#

You can follow the instruction from here to deploy Voila dashboards to Hugging Face Spaces

Running Voilà on a private server#

Prerequisites#

  • A server running Ubuntu 18.04 (or later) with root access.

  • Ability to SSH into the server and run commands from the prompt.

  • The public IP address of the server.

  • A domain name pointing to the IP address of the server.

Steps#

  1. SSH into the server:

    ssh ubuntu@<ip-address>
    
  2. Install nginx:

    sudo apt install nginx
    
  3. To check that nginx is correctly installed:

    sudo systemctl status nginx
    
  4. Create the file /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yourdomain.com with the following content:

    server {
        listen 80;
        server_name yourdomain.com;
        proxy_buffering off;
        location / {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:8866;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
            proxy_read_timeout 86400;
        }
    
        client_max_body_size 100M;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
    }
    
  5. Enable and start the nginx service:

    sudo systemctl enable nginx.service
    sudo systemctl start nginx.service
    
  6. Install pip:

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install python3-pip
    
  7. Follow the instructions in [Setup an example project], and install the dependencies:

    sudo python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
    
  8. Create a new systemd service for running Voilà in /usr/lib/systemd/system/voila.service. The service will ensure Voilà is automatically restarted on startup:

    [Unit]
    Description=Voila
    
    [Service]
    Type=simple
    PIDFile=/run/voila.pid
    ExecStart=voila --no-browser voila/notebooks/basics.ipynb
    User=ubuntu
    WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/
    Restart=always
    RestartSec=10
    
    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target
    

In this example Voilà is started with voila --no-browser voila/notebooks/basics.ipynb to serve a single notebook. You can edit the command to change this behavior and the notebooks Voilà is serving.

  1. Enable and start the voila service:

    sudo systemctl enable voila.service
    sudo systemctl start voila.service
    

Note

To check the logs for Voilà:

journalctl -u voila.service
  1. Now go to yourdomain.com to access the Voilà application.

Enable HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt#

  1. Install certbot:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install python-certbot-nginx
    
  2. Obtain the certificates from Let’s Encrypt. The --nginx flag will edit the nginx configuration automatically:

    sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com
    
  3. /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yourdomain.com should now contain a few more entries:

    $ cat /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yourdomain.com
    
    ...
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ...
    
  4. Visit yourdomain.com to access the Voilà applications over HTTPS.

  5. To automatically renew the certificates (they expire after 90 days), open the crontab file:

    crontab -e
    

    And add the following line:

    0 12 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew --quiet
    

For more information, you can also follow the guide on the nginx blog.

Using Apache2 as reverse proxy#

Apache can also be used to serve voilà. These Apache modules need to be installed and enabled:

  • mod_proxy

  • mod_rewrite

  • mod_proxy_http

  • mod_proxy_wstunnel

With the following configuration:

<VirtualHost *:443>
   # ...
   ProxyRequests Off
   ProxyPreserveHost Off

   <LocationMatch  "/voila/">
      RewriteEngine on
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /voila/api/kernels/
      RewriteRule .*/voila/(.*) "ws://127.0.0.1:50001/voila/$1" [P,L]
      ProxyPreserveHost On
      ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:50001/voila/
      ProxyPassReverse  http://127.0.0.1:50001/voila/
   </LocationMatch>
</VirtualHost>

For the record, Voila was instanciated with the following command line:

$ voila --autoreload=True --port=50001 --base_url=/voila/

And clients can access the instance using https://myhost/voila/

Sharing Voilà applications with ngrok#

ngrok is a useful tool to expose local servers to the public internet over secure tunnels. It can be used to share Voilà applications served by a local instance of Voilà.

The main use case for using Voilà with ngrok is to quickly share a notebook as an interactive application without having to deploy to external hosting.

Warning

Don’t forget to exercise caution before exposing local apps and data to the public over the internet.

While Voilà does not permit arbitrary code execution, be aware that sensitive information could be exposed, depending on the content and the logic of the notebook.

It’s good practice to keep the ngrok tunnel connection short-lived, and limit its use to quick sharing purposes.

Setup ngrok#

To setup ngrok, follow the Download and setup ngrok guide.

Sharing Voilà applications#

  1. Start Voilà locally: voila --no-browser my_notebook.ipynb

  2. In a new terminal window, start ngrok: ngrok http 8866

  3. Copy the link from the ngrok terminal window. The links looks like the following: 8bb6fded.ngrok.io

  4. Send the link

  5. When using the ngrok link, the requests will be forwarded to your local instance of Voilà.