First Steps With Jupyter Notebooks
Tags: beginners, python, 100daysofpython
Published: 2021-08-20 04:42:44

_**I write content for AWS, Kubernetes, Python, JavaScript and more. To view all the latest content, be sure to [visit my blog](https://blog.dennisokeeffe.com) and subscribe to my newsletter. [Follow me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/dennisokeeffe92).**_

> This is Day 1 of the #100DaysOfPython challenge.

With 2021 now in the latter half, I decided to rekindle my love for Python and do a recap and deep dive into the language as my coding project for the latter half of the year.

The posts will be relatively short, but my aim is to use [JupyterLab](https://jupyter.org/) where possible to help write out easy-to-follow notebooks for myself in the future.

This tutorial will make use of [Pipenv](https://pypi.org/project/pipenv/) to handle package management and we will set up a basic example of a Python 3 notebook that will demonstrate usage of another local package [requests](https://pypi.org/project/requests/) that we will install.

## Prerequisites

[Pipenv](https://pypi.org/project/pipenv/) is required to be installed locally to work through this tutorial.

If you are not familiar with Pipenv, I have another post ["The ABCs of Pipenv and Python Package Management"](https://blog.dennisokeeffe.com/blog/2020-07-04-abcs-of-pipenv) that may aid in the fundamentals.

## Setting up

To setup, run the following from the command-line:

```s
# Make the directory
mkdir hello-jupyterlab
cd hello-jupyterlab
pipenv --three

# Install required packages
pipenv install requests
pipenv install --dev jupyterlab
```

We are installing [requests](https://pypi.org/project/requests/) and [jupyterlab](https://jupyter.org/) locally with the latter being a development dependency that would not be required at runtime.

## Adding our first notebook

To start up the notebook, run the following from the command-line:

```s
pipenv run jupyter-lab
```

This should setup a server running JupyterLab on `http://localhost:8888/lab`. From here, we would want to select the `Python 3` kernel and then open up the notebook from under the `Notebook` heading.

![Jupyter notebook welcome](https://cdn.dennisokeeffe.com/assets/hello-jupyter-notebook/1-jupyter-notebook-welcome.png)

Once you are within the untitled notebook, we can add a cell by clicking on the `+` icon on the top left or filling in the input and pressing "enter".

We want to add three cells with the following lines respectively in each cell:

```py
import requests
r = requests.get('https://google.com')
r.status_code
```

As you execute each line, you should see the output of the cell in the console. You can press "shift + enter" to execute or press the play icon in the top bar.

The results of each line will be displayed in the console like the following:

![Jupyter requests notebook](https://cdn.dennisokeeffe.com/assets/hello-jupyter-notebook/2-jupyter-requests-notebook.png)

Most notably, we can now see that `r.status_code` evaluated to have a result of value `200` which is the status code for a successful request.

Save the notebook under `hello_requests.ipynb`. Once this is done, you will see that your notebook has been saved locally for future use.

## Summary

This short post was a demonstration to get JupyterLab working from a local Pipenv project and to demonstrate how to incorporate other dependencies into a notebook.

While brief, it demonstrates enough required knowledge for you to start to get the hang of JupyterLab and the notebook.

I will continue to use this repositiory to show my progress on the 100 Days of Python challenge and to demonstrate usage of other packages and concepts where applicable.

## Resources and further reading

- [The ABCs of Pipenv and Python Package Management](https://blog.dennisokeeffe.com/blog/2020-07-04-abcs-of-pipenv)
- [requests package](https://pypi.org/project/requests/)
- [JupyterLab](https://jupyter.org/)


_Originally posted on my [blog](https://blog.dennisokeeffe.com/blog/2021-07-19-hello-jupyter-notebook). To see new posts without delay, read the posts there and subscribe to my newsletter._