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?

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '19 at 16:23

20

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)

Hope this helps someone out there ;)

answered Mar 04 '19 at 16:23

braunmagrin

828
6
17

Please provide an example of putting some code into the new cell programmatically – WestCoastProjects Aug 26 '22 at 01:45
@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. – braunmagrin Oct 13 '22 at 17:16
Is there a way to create Markdown text ? – Juan Osorio Dec 26 '22 at 18:44
1

@braunmagrin - is there anyway to execute it? – bluesummers May 16 '23 at 07:35
This is not doing anything. I run it in my jupyter notebook as `create_new_cell("print('Hello world!')")`. – Jaideep Shekhar Jun 03 '23 at 10:12
Absolutely brilliant! Very, very creative, thank you. – Chris Aug 12 '23 at 21:18

xingpei Pang · Answer 2 · 2021-11-11T03:44:11.960

1

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 '21 at 03:44

answered Oct 28 '21 at 08:57

xingpei Pang

1,185
11
15

3

I get the error Javascript Error: IPython is not defined – Javier Lopez Tomas Nov 11 '21 at 22:01
I get empty output – filups21 Sep 20 '22 at 13:55

How to programmatically create several new cells in a Jupyter notebook

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