Explore History Messages

[rgbkrk]

There is at least one remaining uncharted message type from Jupyter, History:

For clients to explicitly request history from a kernel. The kernel has all the actual execution history stored in a single location, so clients can request it from the kernel when needed.

The frontend (us, nteract) send a history_request and get back a history_reply like so:

content = {
  history: [],
  // History is a list of lists of length 3:
  // If the history_request set output to false then:
  // [session, line_number, input]
  // If the history_request set output to true then:
  // [session, line_number, [input, output]]
}

[dhirschfeld]

From a user perspective it's very valuable to be able to search your command history. As a point of comparison in ipython/spyder you can start typing a command, press the up-arrow and it will cycle through all previous commands starting with that text. In nteract the UI would necessarily have to be slightly different as the up/down arrows are used to move between cells.

I can see two possible solutions to this:

1. Use a modifier key - e.g. ctrl-up arrow
2. Create a separate History-Palette dialog similar to the notebook's Command-Palette. This dialog would list the history of commands from the most to least recent and would be filterable as you started typing.

IMHO I think option 2 would probably fit in more smoothly with a UI such as nteract.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[rgbkrk]

That would be so nice, we need a design / mockup to get started on this.

[dhirschfeld]

I'm not sure what a design/mockup would involve but I'll note my current thoughts in case they're useful.

I really like my idea above of a History Palette which you could bring up with e.g. Ctrl-Shift-H. Similar to the Command Palette it would have a text box which would dynamically search/filter the results. The text box could initially be populated with the contents of the current line when the palette was invoked.

I think this is a more powerful UX than cycling through the history with the up-arrow so would probably be my preference. It might still be nice to have the ability to cycle through history with e.g. Ctrl-↑ but the History Palette should be sufficient on it's own.

NB: It doesn't appear there's an existing UI in the current notebook:
https://gitter.im/jupyter/notebook?at=5ad07825109bb04332ba9b0c

[stale]

This issue hasn't had any activity on it in the last 90 days. Unfortunately we don't get around to dealing with every issue that is opened. Instead of leaving issues open we're seeking to be transparent by closing issues that aren't being prioritized. If no other activity happens on this issue in one week, it will be closed.
It's more than likely that just by me posting about this, the maintainers will take a closer look at these long forgotten issues to help evaluate what to do next.
If you would like to see this issue get prioritized over others, there are multiple avenues 🗓:

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• Donate to nteract so we can support developers to work on these features and bugs more regularly 💰🕐

Thank you!

[rgbkrk]

I realize I'm super late in responding @dhirschfeld, what I mean by a design / mockup is an image (crafted in Sketch, Illustrator, Inkscape, Paint, etc.) or a prototype UI to build from.

I've pinned the issue for now so stale bot doesn't touch it again.

[captainsafia]

I think we can implement this feature behind the first option that @dhirschfeld describe (a keyboard combination) to get the ball rolling with respect to having the epics and actions laid out.

@fabric-8 Bringing this into your radar as component to design. We need a component that can be used to display a list of the past commands the user has typed.