notebook backend not working in jupyterlab

[michaelaye]

I just installed this on top of my standard env, using conda-forge.

Using standard %matplotlib nbagg as activation command and using standard mpl plotting did not pop up any figure inside a jupyterlab notebook?

Using MPL 2.0 and jupyterlab v0.16 on a Python 3.5 env with conda on OSX 10.11.6 inside Safari 10.0.3

[SylvainCorlay]

All you need to enable this is to import ipympl.

[michaelaye]

Apparently, it must be done at the right time?

/Users/klay6683/miniconda3/envs/stable/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/__init__.py:1401: UserWarning:  This call to matplotlib.use() has no effect
because the backend has already been chosen;
matplotlib.use() must be called *before* pylab, matplotlib.pyplot,
or matplotlib.backends is imported for the first time.

  warnings.warn(_use_error_msg)

[michaelaye]

Still doesn't work. I put import ipympl now as the first line of import in my .ipython profile startup, but still no plot is popping up in jupyterlab v0.16.

[SylvainCorlay]

@michaelaye I am sorry I replied from a mobile device earlier and missed that you were using jupyterlab.

We will add support for jupyterlab after we release ipywidgets 6.0.

[thomasaarholt]

Could someone edit the title to "Notebook backend not working"?
It would be nice to get the notebook/nbagg backend working in jupyter lab. I know many users enjoy having an inline interactive backend.

[danielballan]

Confirmed that it is still broken in the latest release, 0.21.0. Will try to look at this with @tacaswell next week.

[ElmWer]

still not working (ipywidgets 6.0.0, matplotlib 2.0.2, jupyter lab: 0.25.2, Python 3.5.3). It would be appreciated to use nbagg in jupyter lab.

[tacaswell]

Hopefully this will get worked on at the jupytcon sprints next month.

[madx]

Hi, any news about this issue?

[blink1073]

This is now working (shown with pinned versions so this will always work):

pip install jupyterlab==0.28.11 ipympl==0.0.8
jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager@^0.28 jupyter-matplotlib@^0.1
jupyter lab

%matplotlib ipympl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([0,1,1,2])

[danielballan]

Thanks!

[thomasaarholt]

In case others get here and are a little confused:
At the beginning of your notebook, run %matplotlib ipympl, not %matplotlib notebook/nbagg.

For installation
You need to install node.js.
In the terminal, run

conda install notebook jupyterlab # for updating jupyter notebook and lab
pip install ipympl
jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib

[michaelaye]

ipympl is also available via conda, using the conda-forge channel.

[michaelaye]

Are the interactivity features not yet ported? I don't see any zoom/pan etc icons?

[jasongrout]

I tried this out the other day and was able to get mouse clicks to trigger python callbacks.

[fperez]

Should this be reopened for current versions of JLab? I followed @blink1073's instructions above to the letter, with jlab 0.28.11 and ipympl 0.0.8, and it works perfectly.

However, with the current version of JLab (0.30.5) and ipympl 0.1.0, I'm getting with either import ipympl or %matplotlib ipympl the same "Error displaying widget" message.

[blink1073]

Hi @fperez! I just tried with Jlab (0.30.5) and ipympl 0.1.0 and it "Works on My Machine".

[blink1073]

@jasongrout, any debug tips?

[fperez]

@blink1073, thanks for the info! Knowing it works for you made me re-test with a clean, just-created conda env, and it's now fine.

I was testing in an env I'd made exclusively to track jlab, but where I've upgraded jlab multiple times along the way. There must have been stale JS somewhere...

This points out the fact that right now, the upgrade process is still a bit rough: even though I'm isolating jlab into its own env with basically everything from conda and only lab and its dependencies being pulled in manually (plus plugins like this one), every now and then something will break in somewhat hard-to-diagnose ways.

Not complaining at all, just noting that fact so we're aware of it (or at least I keep it more in mind :)

We may want to remind that anyone having weird errors along the way, just nuke even their whole env and make it fresh. It's a bit brutal as a solution, but honestly it's a lot easier than tracking down where the problem may be coming from (and with good reproducibility habits, it's actually pretty painless to nuke/recreate a known env).

Thanks again much!! When the install/upgrade path for this gets smoother, it's going to be awesome for end users, in lab included.

[jasongrout]

Great! Closing again, then.

[pwuertz]

On my machine the setup is failing at

$ jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib
> '' pack @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager
expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not NoneType

Already tried deleting and reinstalling the python user env, which worked for @fperez. The packages installed from pip are ipympl-0.1.0, jupyterlab-0.30.6. Any idea how to debug this?

[pwuertz]

Ok, apparently npm must be installed too. I saw the statement that nodejs is required, but on Ubuntu installing nodejs does not automatically install npm.

[blink1073]

Thanks @pwuertz, looks like we need a better check for whether npm is available.

[allefeld]

I'm getting the following error:

$ jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib
> /home/carstena/anaconda3/bin/npm pack @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager
jupyter-widgets-jupyterlab-manager-0.32.3.tgz

"@jupyter-widgets/[email protected]" is not compatible with the current JupyterLab
Conflicting Dependencies:
JupyterLab                        Extension            Package
>=0.13.1-0 <0.14.0-0              >=0.14.1-0 <0.15.0-0 @jupyterlab/application
>=0.13.0-0 <0.14.0-0              >=1.0.1-0 <2.0.0-0   @jupyterlab/coreutils
>=0.13.0-0 <0.14.0-0              >=0.14.1-0 <0.15.0-0 @jupyterlab/notebook
>=0.13.0-0 <0.14.0-0              >=0.14.1-0 <0.15.0-0 @jupyterlab/rendermime
>=0.4.3-0 <0.5.0-0                >=1.0.1-0 <2.0.0-0   @jupyterlab/rendermime-interfaces
>=0.52.0-0 <0.53.0-0              >=1.0.1-0 <2.0.0-0   @jupyterlab/services

Anaconda 3; jupyter lab & nodejs installed via conda; npm & ipympl via pip.

[jasongrout]

You'll need to use the current prerelease of jupyterlab pip install jupyterlab --pre, or you'll need to install the previous release of the widget manager: jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/[email protected].

[chrisrb10]

I'm also having this problem - and having followed advice above can't seem to resolve it.

I checked the following versions:
jupyterlab - 0.30.6 (conda installed) (NOTE - see update post below)
node.js - 6.11.2 (conda installed)
ipympl - 0.1.0 (conda installed)
npm - 5.5.1 (not installed directly - perhaps already present, perhaps installed when node.js installed)

MacOS 10.12.6

Trying to run jupyter lab triggered an instruction to rebuild jupyter lab - which I did.
Running the %matplotlib ipympl in a notebook triggered the error pasted below.
Any suggestions how to get the interactive charting in matplotlib working in JupyterLab?

---

%matplotlib ipympl error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
KeyError                                  Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-1-e929c3fad522> in <module>()
      2 #%matplotlib notebook
      3 
----> 4 get_ipython().magic('matplotlib ipympl')
      5 
      6 # %matplotlib inline

/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py in magic(self, arg_s)
   2156         magic_name, _, magic_arg_s = arg_s.partition(' ')
   2157         magic_name = magic_name.lstrip(prefilter.ESC_MAGIC)
-> 2158         return self.run_line_magic(magic_name, magic_arg_s)
   2159 
   2160     #-------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py in run_line_magic(self, magic_name, line)
   2077                 kwargs['local_ns'] = sys._getframe(stack_depth).f_locals
   2078             with self.builtin_trap:
-> 2079                 result = fn(*args,**kwargs)
   2080             return result
   2081 

<decorator-gen-104> in matplotlib(self, line)

/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/magic.py in <lambda>(f, *a, **k)
    186     # but it's overkill for just that one bit of state.
    187     def magic_deco(arg):
--> 188         call = lambda f, *a, **k: f(*a, **k)
    189 
    190         if callable(arg):

/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/magics/pylab.py in matplotlib(self, line)
     98             print("Available matplotlib backends: %s" % backends_list)
     99         else:
--> 100             gui, backend = self.shell.enable_matplotlib(args.gui)
    101             self._show_matplotlib_backend(args.gui, backend)
    102 

/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py in enable_matplotlib(self, gui)
   2933         """
   2934         from IPython.core import pylabtools as pt
-> 2935         gui, backend = pt.find_gui_and_backend(gui, self.pylab_gui_select)
   2936 
   2937         if gui != 'inline':

/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/pylabtools.py in find_gui_and_backend(gui, gui_select)
    261     if gui and gui != 'auto':
    262         # select backend based on requested gui
--> 263         backend = backends[gui]
    264     else:
    265         # We need to read the backend from the original data structure, *not*

KeyError: 'ipympl'

[chrisrb10]

Looking again at the above - I realised I might not have the latest version of Jupyter Lab.
So I ran
conda install -c conda-forge jupyterlab

which upgraded Jupyter Lab to 0.31.0

Starting Jupyter Lab then asked for a rebuild - which I did. During the rebuild the following appeared in the bash script:

[3/4] 🔗  Linking dependencies...
warning "@jupyterlab/json-extension > [email protected]" has unmet peer dependency "react@^0.14.0 || ^15.0.0 || ^16.0.0".
warning "@jupyterlab/json-extension > [email protected]" has unmet peer dependency "react@^15.0.0".
warning "@jupyterlab/json-extension > [email protected]" has unmet peer dependency "react-dom@^15.0.0".
warning "@jupyterlab/vdom-extension > @nteract/[email protected]" has unmet peer dependency "react@^15.6.1".
[4/4] 📃  Building fresh packages...
[-/4] ⢀ waiting...
[2/4] ⢀ canvas: gyp
[3/4] ⢀ jupyter-matplotlib: > webpack
[-/4] ⢀ waiting...
warning Error running install script for optional dependency: "/Users/Chris/anaconda3/share/jupyter/lab/staging/node_modules/canvas: Command failed.\nExit code: 1\nCommand: node-gyp rebuild\nArguments: \nDirectory: /Users/Chris/anaconda3/share/jupyter/lab/staging/node_modules/canvas\nOutput:\ngyp info it worked if it ends with ok\ngyp info using [email protected]\ngyp info using [email protected] | darwin | x64\ngyp info spawn /usr/local/bin/python2\ngyp info spawn args [ '/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/gyp_main.py',\ngyp info spawn args   'binding.gyp',\ngyp info spawn args   '-f',\ngyp info spawn args   'make',\ngyp info spawn args   '-I',\ngyp info spawn args   '/Users/Chris/anaconda3/share/jupyter/lab/staging/node_modules/canvas/build/config.gypi',\ngyp info spawn args   '-I',\ngyp info spawn args   '/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/addon.gypi',\ngyp info spawn args   '-I',\ngyp info spawn args   '/Users/Chris/.node-gyp/8.9.3/include/node/common.gypi',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dlibrary=shared_library',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dvisibility=default',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_root_dir=/Users/Chris/.node-gyp/8.9.3',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_gyp_dir=/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_lib_file=/Users/Chris/.node-gyp/8.9.3/<(target_arch)/node.lib',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dmodule_root_dir=/Users/Chris/anaconda3/share/jupyter/lab/staging/node_modules/canvas',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_engine=v8',\ngyp info spawn args   '--depth=.',\ngyp info spawn args   '--no-parallel',\ngyp info spawn args   '--generator-output',\ngyp info spawn args   'build',\ngyp info spawn args   '-Goutput_dir=.' ]\nPackage cairo was not found in the pkg-config search path.\nPerhaps you should add the directory containing `cairo.pc'\nto the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable\nNo package 'cairo' found\ngyp: Call to './util/has_lib.sh freetype' returned exit status 0 while in binding.gyp. while trying to load binding.gyp\ngyp ERR! configure error \ngyp ERR! stack Error: `gyp` failed with exit code: 1\ngyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.onCpExit (/Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/configure.js:336:16)\ngyp ERR! stack     at emitTwo (events.js:126:13)\ngyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:214:7)\ngyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:198:12)\ngyp ERR! System Darwin 16.7.0\ngyp ERR! command \"/Users/Chrisuccess Saved lockfile.
✨  Done in 30.58s.
[I 13:09:02.896 LabApp] > node /Users/Chris/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/staging/yarn.js run build:prod
yarn run v1.3.2

After reloading the Jupyter Lab page, the %matplotlib ipympl instruction triggered the same error traceback as in my original post above.

[thomasaarholt]

@chrisrb10 I'd try uninstalling jupyterlab with conda and installing with pip install jupyterlab --pre per @jasongrout's instructions above.

[chrisrb10]

@thomasaarholt thanks - I tried that.
Got the same rebuild error code as above, and then the same error when I tried to run
%matplotlib ipympl in jupyter lab

If it is relevant - my Jupyter notebook is v.5.0.0. I have upgraded to more recent versions (5.2, 5.3) but each time I do I lose the ability to download as html (this issue) - so downgraded back to 5.0.0.

[astrojuanlu]

To all wanderers, make sure to conda install --channel conda-forge nodejs, not node.

[jarascript]

Use the current prerelease of jupyterlab worked for me! Thanks @jasongrout.

[johnmarktaylor91]

I have the same problem as chrisrb10 ("KeyError")... any luck on that front?

[SylvainCorlay]

With the latest version of jupyter-matplotlib (0.2.1), the way to enable the interactive back-end is with

%matplotlib widget

[johnmarktaylor91]

This gives me the same problem with the KeyError.

[SylvainCorlay]

Is ipympl installed?

[johnmarktaylor91]

Yup. "Import ipympl" works with no hitches.

[SylvainCorlay]

What is the version of matplotlib?

[johnmarktaylor91]

2.0.0

[tacaswell]

@johnmarktaylor91 You need to update ipykernel / ipython to a version that is aware of ipympl.

You can also monkey patch in the right information.

[johnmarktaylor91]

I updated ipykernel to the most recent version and still the same error.

[eiriklid]

I had to install yarn to be able to run jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib

before I got:

[1/4] Resolving packages...
error An unexpected error occurred: "https://registry.yarnpkg.com/@jupyterlab%2fapplication: self signed certificate in certificate chain".

After installing yarn I ran:
yarn config set "strict-ssl" false

When reopening the terminal it ran successfully!

[kiwi0fruit]

Worked for me:

conda install jupyterlab jupyterlab_server tk nodejs
pip install ipympl
jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib

Then use %matplotlib widget in notebook.

PS : or maybe it was conda install -c defaults -c conda-forge ...

[Chandrakantbhise]

Just go through this PATH definitely it will fix your problem
start -> anaconda or jupyter notebook prompt
step fist-> pip install nbconvert==5.4.1
step second -> python -m pip install --upgrade pip

please let me know once you fix it

[Bukharee]

when i try to install jupyter matplotlib using the command "conda install -c conda forge ipympl" on anaconda prompt here's the error that prompt
Collecting package metadata (current_repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.
Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

• forge

Current channels:

• https://conda.anaconda.org/conda/win-64
• https://conda.anaconda.org/conda/noarch
• https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/win-64
• https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
• https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/win-64
• https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
• https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-64
• https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch

To search for alternate channels that may provide the conda package you're
looking for, navigate to

https://anaconda.org

and use the search bar at the top of the page.
solution please!!

[martinRenou]

I fear you are mixing the conda-forge with other channels. I would suggest sticking with the conda-forge channel and not use other channels in the same environment, because that can bring issues. conda-forge should already contain everything you need.

[kiwi0fruit]

Try -c conda-forgeinstead of -c conda forge

[martinRenou]

Oh, good catch!

[Bukharee]

Ok let me try

[Bukharee]

Thanks really helped

[baturevychvitalii]

In case others get here and are a little confused: At the beginning of your notebook, run %matplotlib ipympl, not %matplotlib notebook/nbagg.

For installation You need to install node.js. In the terminal, run

conda install notebook jupyterlab # for updating jupyter notebook and lab
pip install ipympl
jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib

thank you, for Arch it helped to install jupyterlab-widgets from the repository.

[martinRenou]

Just a note that starting with jupyterlab v4, you should NEVER run jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager jupyter-matplotlib or any other jupyter labextension install commands.