Using Voilà#

Voilà can be used as a standalone application, or as a Jupyter server extension. This page describes how to do each. Before you begin, make sure that you follow the steps in Installing Voilà.

The following sections cover how to use Voilà.

As a standalone application#

Voilà can be used to run, convert, and serve a Jupyter notebook as a standalone app. This can be done via the command-line, with the following pattern:

voila <path-to-notebook> <options>

For example, to render the bqplot example notebook as a standalone app, run

git clone https://github.com/voila-dashboards/voila
cd voila
voila notebooks/bqplot.ipynb

Voilà displays a message when your notebook-based application is live. By default, Voilà runs at localhost:8866.

To serve a directory of Jupyter Notebooks, navigate to the directory you’d like to serve, then simply run voila:

cd notebooks/
voila

The page served by Voilà will now contain a list of any notebooks in the directory. By clicking on one, you will trigger Voilà’s conversion process. A new Jupyter kernel will be created for each notebook you click.

As a Jupyter server extension#

You can also use Voilà from within a Jupyter server (e.g., after running jupyter lab or jupyter notebook).

Note

Voilà can also be used as a notebook server extension, both with the notebook server or with the jupyter_server.

To use Voilà within a pre-existing Jupyter server, first start the server, then go to the following URL:

<url-of-my-server>/voila

For example, if you typed jupyter lab and it was running at http://localhost:8888/lab, then Voilà would be accessed at http://localhost:8888/voila.

In this case, Voilà will serve the directory in which the Jupyter server was started.

How does Voilà work?#

When Voilà is run on a notebook, the following steps occur:

  1. Voilà runs the code in the notebook and collects the outputs

  2. The notebook and its outputs are converted to HTML. By default, the notebook code cells are hidden.

  3. This page is served either as a Tornado application, or via the Jupyter server.

  4. When users access the page, the widgets on the page have access to the underlying Jupyter kernel.

The example notebooks#

The notebooks directory contains a collection of Jupyter notebooks that can be rendered using Voilà:

  • basics.ipynb - a notebook with interactions requiring a roundtrip to the kernel.

  • bqplot.ipynb - uses custom Jupyter widgets such as bqplot.

  • dashboard.ipynb - uses gridstack.js for the layout of each output.

  • gridspecLayout.ipynb - uses GridspecLayout for the layout of different widgets.

  • interactive.ipynb - makes use of ipywidget’s @interact.

  • ipympl.ipynb - contains custom interactive matplotlib figures using the ipympl widget.

  • ipyvolume.ipynb - uses custom Jupyter widgets such as ipyvolume.

  • query-strings.ipynb - uses HTTP query parameters to parametrize a notebook

  • xleaflet.ipynb - a notebook that uses C++ kernel and interactive widgets

These examples demonstrate different interactive HTML widgets and can be used as inspiration for getting started with Voilà.

To run the example notebooks, a few additional libraries can be installed using:

conda install -c conda-forge ipywidgets ipyvolume bqplot scipy

Or alternatively:

conda env create

The examples can then be served with:

cd notebooks/
voila