Command Line Interface for nbparameterise

[dokempf]

I just wanted to let you know that I have played around with a click-based command line interface for nbparameterise. I have published the result under the name nbclick. It allows to modify and run notebooks directly from the command line. E.g. if this code cell is in notebook.ipynb:

num_samples = 1000      # The number of samples to draw
outfile = "output.csv"  # The filename to store the results

Then, nbclick will generate the following CLI that automatically runs the notebook:

Usage: nbclick notebook.ipynb [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --num_samples INTEGER  The number of samples to draw  [default: 1000]
  --outfile TEXT         The filename to store the results  [default:
                         output.csv]
  --help                 Show this message and exit.

If you are interested, the code for nbclick could be incorporated directly into nbparameterise (it is ~50 lines of code). If you prefer to have it separate, it would be cool to link to it from the nbparameterise's README.

[takluyver]

Nice! I think I'd be inclined to leave it separate, so nbparameterise is just focused on the Python API. I'm old-fashioned enough that I like to avoid extra dependencies. 😄 I'd be happy to have a link in the README, though.

We have some internal code (at European XFEL) which does something similar but built around argparse. It's nothing really secret, but it's kind of messy because it's tied up in a larger system. But one bit you might be interested in is that we turn boolean parameters into pairs of flags like --foo and --no-foo. Here's the relevant bit of code:

elif issubclass(p.type, bool):
    # For a boolean, make --XYZ and --no-XYZ options.
    alt_group = pars_group.add_mutually_exclusive_group(required=required)
    alt_group.add_argument(f"--{consolize_name(p.name)}",
                           action="store_true",
                           default=default,
                           help=helpstr,
                           dest=p.name)
    alt_group.add_argument(f"--no-{consolize_name(p.name)}",
                           action="store_false",
                           default=default,
                           help=f"Opposite of --{consolize_name(p.name)}",
                           dest=p.name)

Undoubtedly something similar is possible with Click, though I don't know exactly how to write it. 🙂

(Our code also has another special case to turn ranges like 0-7 into lists of integers, but I think that probably doesn't make sense in a general tool.)

[takluyver]

BTW, I was working on some improvements to the parameter replacement and the Python API in #19. Then I found I was uncertain about how I wanted a couple of things to work, so I stopped to think about it and then forgot about it. If you have any thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them.

[dokempf]

I can also see the benefit of a separate tool, but I thought I'd give you the choice. Good feedback on the boolean switches - that is a very simple addition I will incorporate. Will have a look at #19.