issues

I just watched a demo video for the JupyterLab Chart Editor which wraps the plotly chart editor app in a JupyterLab panel and lets you open a plotly chart JSON file in that editor. Essentially, it pops an HTML app into a panel in JupyterLab, and I think registers the app as a file viewer for a particular file type. (I'm not completely taken by it, tbh, because it means you can do irreproducible things to the chart definition file, but that's another issue).

JupyterLab extensions can also open files from a dialogue as the iframe/html previewer shows: https://github.com/timkpaine/jupyterlab_iframe.

This made me wonder about what datasette integration with JupyterLab might do.

For example, by right-clicking on a CSV file (for which there is already a CSV table view) in the file browser, offer a View / Run as datasette file viewer option that will:

• run the CSV file through csvs-to-sqlite;
• launch the datasette server and display the datasette view in a JupyterLab panel.

(? Create a new SQLite db for each CSV file and launch each datasette view on a new port? Or have a JupyterLab (session?) SQLite db that stores all datasette viewed CSVs and runs on a single port?)

As a freebie, the datasette API would allow you to run efficient SQL queries against the file eg using using pandas.read_sql() queries in a notebook in the same space.

Related:

• JupyterLab extensions docs
• a cookiecutter for wrting JupyterLab extensions using Javascript
• a cookiecutter for writing JupyterLab extensions using Typescript
• tutorial: Let’s Make an xkcd JupyterLab Extension

If you try to publish to Heroku using no set name (i.e. the default datasette name) and a project already exists under that name, you get a meaningful error report on the first line followed by Py error messages that drown it out:

Creating datasette... ! ▸ Name datasette is already taken Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/bin/datasette", line 10, in <module> sys.exit(cli()) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 764, in __call__ return self.main(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 717, in main rv = self.invoke(ctx) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1137, in invoke return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx)) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1137, in invoke return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx)) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 956, in invoke return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 555, in invoke return callback(*args, **kwargs) File "/Users/NNNNN/Library/Python/3.7/lib/python/site-packages/datasette/publish/heroku.py", line 124, in heroku create_output = check_output(cmd).decode("utf8") File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/3.7.5/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 411, in check_output **kwargs).stdout File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/3.7.5/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 512, in run output=stdout, stderr=stderr) subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['heroku', 'apps:create', 'datasette', '--json']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

It would be neater if:

• the Py error message was caught;
• the report suggested setting a project name using -n etc.

It may also be useful to provide a command to list the current names that are being used, which I assume is available via a Heroku call?

In terms of small pieces lightly joined, I note that there are several tools starting to appear for building generating Dockerfiles and building Docker containers from simpler components such as requirements.txt files.

If plugin/extensions builders want to include additional packages, then things like incremental builds of composable builds that add additional items into a base datasette container may be required.

Examples of Dockerfile generators / container builders:

• openshift/source-to-image (s2i)
• jupyter/repo2docker
• stencila/dockter

Discussions / threads (via Binderhub gitter) on: - why repo2docker not s2i - why dockter not repo2docker - composability in s2i

Relates to things like:

• https://github.com/simonw/datasette/pull/280