[IPython-dev] make ipython work over web

[Brian Granger]

Ondrej,

Yes, we definitely want people to be able to use IPython in this
manner.  As Fernando mentioned, earlier this week he and I did a short
2 day sprint to create a first prototype of a 2 process
kernel+frontend model using 0MQ.  It worked even better than we hoped
and we are convinced that this is the future for IPython.  The idea is
that the IPython "kernel" would run in a separate process and listen
on a few 0MQ sockets.  A "frontend" (which could be a web server)
would talk to the kernel using JSON based messages and a thin 0MQ
based API.

> it just occurred to me that it'd be a cool idea to be able to use
> ipython as the Sage/FEMhub notebook, in particular, you would use it
> just like regular ipython in the terminal (only at the beginning you
> would log in) and it would interface the Sage/FEMhub server over some
> API (I am playing with json-rpc api at [0]) and I guess it would
> always create a new worksheet and only allow to add new cells at the
> bottom (which is the way ipython works).
>
> So it will be a nice thin client. I don't know how this fits in the
> recent ipython refactoring. Essentially I am trying to figure out some
> nice API for evaluating cells, doctests ("?"), code inspection ("??"),
> code completion ("TAB"), and it takes some time to always implement
> this in the web notebook directly, so I want to play with this in a
> simple terminal client.

Currently this new stuff is just a prototype.  Two things (still not
small) need to happen:

* We need to make the prototype kernel work for real with IPython.
* We need to solidify the frontend API so that others can start to use it.

But, both Fernando and i are feeling that these things are doable now
whereas before the 0MQ stuff, it felt semi-hopeless.

> Essentially almost all ipython features could work remotely over some
> API. And the web notebook would then use the exact same interface, so
> it should be easy for people to write the web notebooks.

This is our vision.

> I guess some of you must have thought about this, but I am just
> posting it here, as I like this idea (so far).

I definitely encourage you to have a look at the demo Fernando linked
to.  It does some very non-trivial things that will be important for a
web based interface.  The most important thing is how it handles
stdout/stderr/displayhook asynchronously.

In the demo try:

import time
for i in range(10):
  time.sleep(1)
  print i
  i**2  # this triggers displayhook

The print and the displayhook will happen async.  And if there are
multiple frontends connected, they will *all* see the results.  I
bring up these things because I saw that the sympy alpha does not
handle printing asynchronously like the Sage notebook.

Cheers,

Brian
-- 
Brian E. Granger, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Physics
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger at calpoly.edu
ellisonbg at gmail.com