The IPython Notebook consists of two related components: (1) An JSON based Notebook document format for recording and distributing Python code and rich text. (2) A web-based user interface for authoring and running notebook documents.
The IPython Notebook, Deprecated: now a jupyter notebook, consists of two related components:
- A JSON based Notebook document format for recording and distributing Python code and rich text
- A web-based user interface for authoring and running notebook documents
The Notebook can be used by starting the Notebook server with the command:
$ ipython notebook
On recent systems this will result in a warning: Subcommandipython notebookis deprecated and will be removed in future versions.
The landing page of the notebook server application, which we call the IPython Notebook dashboard, shows the notebooks currently available in the directory in which the application was started, and allows you to create new notebooks.
A notebook is a combination of two things:
- An interactive session connected to an IPython kernel, controlled by a web application that can send input to the console and display many types of output (text, graphics, mathematics and more). This is the same kernel used by the Qt console, but in this case the web console sends input in persistent cells that you can edit in-place instead of the vertically scrolling terminal style used by the Qt console.
- A document that can save the inputs and outputs of the session as well as additional text that accompanies the code but is not meant for execution. In this way, notebook files serve as a complete computational record of a session including explanatory text and mathematics, code and resulting figures. These documents are internally JSON files and are saved with the .ipynb extension.
If you have ever used the Mathematica or Sage notebooks (the latter is also web-based) you should feel right at home. If you have not, you should be able to learn how to use it in just a few minutes.
[source]
