Jupytext supports conversion between the .ipynb format and many different formats. This page describes each format, as well as some considerations for each.
Jupytext can save notebooks as Markdown documents. This format is well adapted to tutorials, books, or more generally notebooks that contain more text than code. Notebooks represented in this form are well rendered by most Markdown editors or renderers, including GitHub.
Like all the Jupytext formats, Jupytext Markdown notebooks start with an (optional) YAML header. This header is used to store selected notebook metadata like the kernel information, together with Jupytext's format and version information.
---
jupyter:
jupytext:
text_representation:
extension: .md
format_name: markdown
format_version: '1.1'
jupytext_version: 1.1.0
kernelspec:
display_name: Python 3
language: python
name: python3
---
You can add custom notebook metadata like author or title under the jupyter: section, it will be synchronized with the notebook metadata.
And if you wish to export more metadata from the notebook, have a look at the paragraph on metadata filtering.
In the Markdown format, markdown cells are inserted verbatim and separated with two blank lines.
If you'd like that cell breaks also occurs on Markdown headers, add a split_at_heading: true entry in the jupytext section in the YAML header, or if you want that option to be the default for all Markdown documents in Jupyter, activate the option in the jupytext.toml configuration file:
split_at_heading = true
Code cells are encoded using the classical triple backticks, followed by the notebook language. Cell metadata are appended after the language information, with a key=value syntax, where value is encoded in JSON format. For instance, in a Python notebook, a simple code cell with a parameters tag is represented as:
```python tags=["parameters"]
param = 5
```
Code snippets are turned into code cells in Jupyter as soon as they have an explicit language, when that language is supported in Jupyter. Thus, you have a code snippet that you don't want to execute in Jupyter, you can either
- remove the language information,
- or, start the code snippet with a triple tilde, e.g.
~~~python, instead of```python - or, add an
active="md"cell metadata, or a.noevalattribute after the language information, e.g.```python .noeval - or, surround the code snippet with explicit Markdown cell markers (see below).
Raw cells are delimited with HTML comments, and accept cell metadata in the same key=value format:
<!-- #raw -->
raw text
<!-- #endraw -->
<!-- #raw key="value"-->
raw cell with metadata
<!-- #endraw -->
Markdown cells can also have explicit markers: use one of <!-- #md --> or <!-- #markdown --> or <!-- #region --> and the corresponding <!-- #end... --> counterpart. Note that the <!-- #region --> and <!-- #endregion --> cells markers are foldable in VS Code, and that you can also insert a title there, e.g. <!-- #region This is a title for my protected cell -->. Cell metadata are accepted in the format key="value" ("value" being encoded in JSON) as for the other cell types.
For a concrete example, see how our World population.ipynb notebook in the demo folder is represented in Markdown.
R Markdown is RStudio's format for notebooks, with support for R, Python, and many other languages.
Jupytext's implementation of R Markdown is very similar to that of the Markdown format. The major difference is on code cells, which use R Markdown's convention, i.e. the language and options are surrounded by curly brackets, and the cell metadata are encoded as R objects. For instance our cell with the parameters tags would be represented as:
```{python tags=c("parameters")}
param = 5
```
Python and R notebooks represented in the R Markdown format can run both in Jupyter and RStudio. Note that you can change the default Python environment in RStudio with RETICULATE_PYTHON in a .Renviron file, see here.
See how our World population.ipynb notebook in the demo folder is represented in R Markdown.
MyST (Markedly Structured Text) is a markdown flavor that "implements the best parts of reStructuredText". It provides a way to call Sphinx directives and roles from within Markdown, using a slight extension of CommonMark markdown. MyST-NB and Jupyter Book builds on this markdown flavor, to offer direct conversion of Jupyter Notebooks into Sphinx documents.
Similar to the jupytext Markdown format, MyST Markdown uses code blocks to contain code cells. The difference though, is that the metadata is contained in a YAML block:
```{code-cell} ipython3
---
other:
more: true
tags: [hide-output, show-input]
---
print("Hallo!")
```The ipython3 here is purely optional, as an aide for syntax highlighting.
In the round-trip, it is copied from notebook.metadata.language_info.pygments_lexer.
Also, where possible the conversion will use the short-hand metadata format (see the MyST guide):
```{code-cell} ipython3
:tags: [hide-output, show-input]
print("Hallo!")
```Raw cells are also represented in a similar fashion:
```{raw-cell}
:raw_mimetype: text/html
<b>Bold text<b>
```Markdown cells are not wrapped. If a markdown cell has metadata, or directly proceeds another markdown cell, then a block break will be inserted above it, with an (optional) single line JSON representation of the metadata:
+++ {"slide": true}
This is a markdown cell with metadata
+++
This is a new markdown cell with no metadataSee for instance how our World population.ipynb notebook is represented in the myst format.
Note: The myst format requires Python >= 3.6
Tip: You can use the myst-highlight VS Code extension to provide better syntax highlighting for this format.
Pandoc, the Universal document converter, can read and write Jupyter notebooks - see Pandoc's documentation.
In Pandoc Markdown, all cells are marked with pandoc divs (:::). The format is therefore slightly more verbose than the Jupytext Markdown format.
See for instance how our World population.ipynb notebook is represented in the md:pandoc format.
If you wish to use that format, please install pandoc in version 2.7.2 or above, with e.g. conda install pandoc -c conda-forge.
Quarto is a scientific and technical publishing system built on Pandoc. If you have quarto installed, Jupytext lets you edit .qmd documents as notebooks in Jupyter, and pair .ipynb notebooks with .qmd notebooks.
The conversion from .ipynb to .qmd and back directly calls quarto convert, and consequently requires an installation of Quarto v0.2.134 or higher.
Note that the round trip of .ipynb to .qmd to .ipynb has the effect of concatenating consecutive Markdown cells and turning raw cells into Markdown cells (since .qmd files represent all content as either Markdown or code cells).
The light format was created for this project. That format can read any script in one of these languages as a Jupyter notebook, even scripts which were never prepared to become a notebook.
When a script in the light format is converted to a notebook, Jupytext code paragraphs are turned into code cells, and comments that are not adjacent to code are converted to Markdown cells. Cell breaks occurs on blank lines outside of functions, classes or multiline comments.
For instance, in this example we have three cells:
# This is a multiline
# Markdown cell
# Another Markdown cell
# This is a code cell
class A():
def one():
return 1
def two():
return 2Code cells can contain multiple code paragraphs. In that case Jupytext uses an explicit start-of-cell delimiter that is, by default, # + (// + in C++, etc). The default end of cell delimiter is # -, and can be omitted when followed by another explicit start of cell marker, or the end of the file:
# +
# A single code cell made of two paragraphs
a = 1
def f(x):
return x+aMetadata can be associated to a given cell using a key/value representation:
# + key="value"
# A code cell with metadata
# + [markdown] key="value"
# A Markdown cell with metadataThe light format can use custom cell markers instead of # + or # -. If you prefer to mark cells with VS Code/PyCharm (resp. Vim) folding markers, set "cell_markers": "region,endregion" (resp. "{{{,}}}") in the jupytext section of the notebook metadata. If you want to configure this as a global default, add either
cell_markers = "region,endregion" # Use VS Code/PyCharm region folding delimitersor
cell_markers = "{{{,}}}" # Use Vim region folding delimitersto your jupytext.toml configuration file.
See how our World population.ipynb notebook is represented in that format.
The nomarker format is a variation of the light format with no cell marker at all. Please note that this format does not provide round-trip consistency - code cells are split on code paragraphs. By default, the nomarker format still includes a YAML header - if you prefer to also remove the header, set "notebook_metadata_filter": "-all" in the jupytext section of your notebook metadata.
The percent format is a representation of Jupyter notebooks as scripts, in which all cells are explicitly delimited with a commented double percent sign # %%. The percent format is currently available for these languages.
The format was introduced by Spyder in 2013, and is now supported by many editors, including
- Spyder IDE,
- Hydrogen, a package for Atom,
- VS Code,
- Python Tools for Visual Studio,
- and PyCharm Professional.
Our implementation of the percent format is as follows: cells can have
- a title
- a cell type (
markdown,mdorraw, omitted for code cells) - and cell metadata like in this example:
# %% Optional title [cell type] key="value"In the percent format, our previous example becomes:
# %% [markdown]
# This is a multiline
# Markdown cell
# %% [markdown]
# Another Markdown cell
# %%
# This is a code cell
class A():
def one():
return 1
def two():
return 2In the case of Python scripts, Markdown cells do accept multiline comments:
# %% [markdown]
"""
This is a Markdown cell
that uses multiline comments
"""By default Jupytext will use line comments when it converts your Jupyter notebooks for percent scripts. If you prefer to use multiline comments for all text cells, add a {"jupytext": {"cell_markers": "\"\"\""}} metadata to your notebook, either with the notebook metadata editor in Jupyter, or at the command line:
jupytext --update-metadata '{"jupytext": {"cell_markers": "\"\"\""}}' notebook.ipynb --to py:percentIf you want to use multiline comments for all your paired notebooks, you could also add
cell_markers = '"""'to your jupytext.toml configuration file.
See how our World population.ipynb notebook is represented in the percent format.
By default, Jupyter magics are commented in the percent representation. If you run the percent scripts in Hydrogen, use the hydrogen format, a variant of the percent format that does not comment Jupyter magic commands.
Another popular notebook-like format for Python scripts is the Sphinx-gallery format. Scripts that contain at least two lines with more than twenty hash signs are classified as Sphinx-Gallery notebooks by Jupytext.
Comments in Sphinx-Gallery scripts are formatted using reStructuredText rather than markdown. They can be converted to markdown for a nicer display in Jupyter by adding a sphinx_convert_rst2md = True line to your Jupytext configuration file. Please note that this is a non-reversible transformation—use this only with Binder. Revert to the default value sphinx_convert_rst2md = False when you edit Sphinx-Gallery files with Jupytext.
Turn a GitHub repository containing Sphinx-Gallery scripts into a live notebook repository with Binder and Jupytext by adding only two files to the repo:
binder/requirements.txt, a list of the required packages (includingjupytext)- a
jupytext.tomlconfiguration file with the following contents:
preferred_jupytext_formats_read = "py:sphinx"
sphinx_convert_rst2md = true
Our sample notebook is also represented in sphinx format here.
All the Jupytext formats (except Sphinx Gallery scripts) store a selection of the notebook metadata in a YAML header at the top of the text file. By default, Jupytext only includes the kernelspec and jupytext metadata (the remaining notebook metadata are preserved in the .ipynb document when you use paired notebook).
If you want to include more (or less) jupyter metadata here, add a notebook_metadata_filter option to the jupytext metadata.
The additional metadata will be added to the jupyter: section in the YAML header (or, at the root of the YAML header for the md:pandoc and md:myst formats).
The value for notebook_metadata_filter is a comma separated list of additional/excluded (negated) entries, with all a keyword that allows to exclude all entries. For instance, if you don't want to store any notebook metadata in the text file, use notebook_metadata_filter: -all. If you want to store the whole, unfiltered notebook metadata then use notebook_metadata_filter: all. And if you want the default, plus a few specific section, use e.g. notebook_metadata_filter: section_one,section_two.
Similarly, cell metadata can be filtered with the cell_metadata_filter option. To minimize the differences when a notebook is edited, Jupytext's default cell metadata filter does not include the autoscroll, collapsed, scrolled, trusted and ExecuteTime cell metadata in the text representation.
Jupyter notebooks often include magic commands like %load_ext or %matplotlib inline. These commands are Jupyter specific and cannot be executed by the classical interpreter.
By default, magic commands are commented out in all the Jupytext formats, with the exception of the Markdown format (not meant to be executed) and the Hydrogen format. You can change this by setting a comment_magics option (true or false) in the Jupytext section.
Sometimes you want a specific cell to be executable only in the .ipynb files, or only in the .py or .Rmd representation. To this end Jupytext introduces the notion of active cells.
Mark a code cell with an "active": "ipynb" metadata or with an active-ipynb tag if you want it to be commented out in the paired script.
Mark a raw cell with an "active": "py" metadata or with an active-py tag if you want it to be inactive in the notebook but active in the script.