Get embed_notebook() working inside nteract

[jackparmer]

embed_notebook() currently doesn't work out-of-the-box in nteract

Here's a screenshot of what you see currently:

Here's a workaround currently being proposed for plotly.py on the Python side:

plotly/plotly.py#562 (comment)

[rgbkrk]

For those implementing this nteract accepts a payload when in the R kernel with mimetype application/vnd.plotly.v1+json:

library(IRdisplay)

data <- list(list(x=c(1999, 2000, 2001, 2002), y=c(10, 15, 13, 17), type='scatter'))
figure <- list(data=data)

mimebundle <- list('application/vnd.plotly.v1+json'=figure)
#mimebundle[[]] <- figure
IRdisplay::publish_mimebundle(mimebundle)

It assumes the Plotly figure from the Plotly JSON chart spec. Result:

[souravsingh]

I would like to take a stab at this

[souravsingh]

How do I start with the issue?

[rgbkrk]

Within embed_notebook you'll want to use IRDisplay with publish_mimebundle as outlined above to embed the direct JSON (and likely the HTML as well). Feel free to cc me in your PR.

[cpsievert]

I was surprised to find that Jupyter Notebooks appear to now have "native" support for all htmlwidgets, which should make a lot of folks happy, and removes any need for a embed_notebook()-like hack. Here is a gif:

I'm guessing the notebook somehow knows to call repr::repr_html() when the output is of class "htmlwidgets". It would be awesome if nteract could do something similar so printing htmlwidgets just works™️ in same way it does for other contexts (e.g., R console, rmarkdown, shiny, Jupyter, etc).

PS. @rgbkrk's suggested approach above wouldn't lead to first-class support for a couple reasons

(1) The R package has an extra layer of JavaScript that plotly.js doesn't know about -- meaning some R specific functionality (such as the linked views stuff) wouldn't work.
(2) The R package bundles a specific version of plotly.js that might conflict with the version nteract uses.
(3) Requires the user to call an extraneous function to embed a plot.

@rgbkrk, I'd be happy to elaborate/discuss anything further to help nteract gain first-class support for all htmlwidgets, but @flying-sheep would probably be more helpful/knowledgable on that front. If and when that happens, we should probably deprecate embed_notebook().

[rgbkrk]

The R package has an extra layer of JavaScript that plotly.js doesn't know about -- meaning some R specific functionality (such as the linked views stuff) wouldn't work.

That's fine, it can keep on embedding HTML on the page. Does it require define and require to be available? The require "available" in the nteract app is the nodejs/commonjs require (and not suitable for use), which means that some amount of type checking is required (or a UMD bundle).

The R package bundles a specific version of plotly.js that might conflict with the version nteract uses.

nteract's is at least namespaced, there is no global plotly object on the page. The bundled version allows for straight plotly spec -> render using jupyter's mimetype setup.

I'll upgrade my IRKernel setup to make sure I'm up to date and try this out.

[flying-sheep]

I'm guessing the notebook somehow knows to call repr::repr_html() when the output is of class "htmlwidgets".

jep, that’s how I designed the IRkernel display system:

1. mime2repr is a list of repr_* functions.
2. IRkernel basically calls all functions for the mimetypes returned by getOption('jupyter.display_mimetypes').
3. since those are S3 generics, the existence of a repr_html.myclass means that objects of class myclass will have this function called.

---

repr is explicitly designed not to be tied to IRkernel, so if anything wants to define a rich display/render system based on it, please go ahead!

[flying-sheep]

things unrelated to above exposition:

• there’s one known bug idk how to work around: “'isolate': True” metadata leaves 1px output area in Firefox jupyter/notebook#1282
• the current repr_html.htmlwidget is pretty primitive: it has no notion of dependencies (as the notebook has none; can’t find the issue ATM), so it just concatenates all the JS and HTML, and returns it.

[cpsievert]

For those interested, with #859, one can now embed any (local) R plotly graph in nteract via embed_notebook() (remote coming soon):

As it turns out, the problem is related to the fact that nteract doesn't wrap the resulting HTML in an iframe (but Jupyter does)...

Before officially closing this issue, it'd be nice to have a mechanism to tip off nteract users that they need to use embed_notebook() (maybe via a message when loading the package) -- @rgbkrk is there anyway to detect whether the R session in running in an nteract environment? Maybe (hopefully) through an environment variable?