Enter IPython Notebook

Websauna offers an integrated IPython Notebook shell on the site. It is the most powerful built-in tool for diagnostics, data analysis and poking your database.

Here we show how to enter to the IPython Notebook and create additional user through Python shell.

The notebook shell will be extensively used in the following chapter of this tutorial.

Enter notebook

You can enter the notebook in two ways

• The Shell link in the top navigation bar opens a generic notebook session

• The Shell button of an Admin interface object opens a notebook session prepopulated with this particular item

Note

Firing up the shell takes some seconds as IPython Notebook is rather heavyish.

Using shell

Let’s change the name of your user through the notebook.

• Navigate to your user object in admin interface Admin > Models > Users > [your user]

• Press Shell button next to Edit button and Set password Buttons. Note: This is different Shell button from one at the top navigation.

Now Notebook exposes the currently browser item as obj variable.

Type in shell (you can use TAB key for autocomplete variable names and functions):

obj.full_name = "The king of Python"
transaction.commit()

Press ALT + Enter to execute the current contents of the cell in notebook. There is no output for a successful command, because the last line in the cell (transaction.commit) returns None.

The latter line is important, because unlike when processing HTTP requests, in shell transactions are not automatically committed. For more information this you can read database documentation chapter.

Exit notebook

You can shut down the notebook by pressing [ shutdown ] link in the top. Now navigate back to your user in admin. You see its name has been updated.