Note

This documentation is for a development version of IPython. There may be significant differences from the latest stable release.

Making simple Python wrapper kernels

New in version 3.0.

You can now re-use the kernel machinery in IPython to easily make new kernels. This is useful for languages that have Python bindings, such as Octave (via Oct2Py), or languages where the REPL can be controlled in a tty using pexpect, such as bash.

See also

bash_kernel

A simple kernel for bash, written using this machinery

Required steps

Subclass IPython.kernel.zmq.kernelbase.Kernel, and implement the following methods and attributes:

class MyKernel

implementation

implementation_version

language

language_version

banner

Information for Kernel info replies. ‘Implementation’ refers to the kernel (e.g. IPython), and ‘language’ refers to the language it interprets (e.g. Python). The ‘banner’ is displayed to the user in console UIs before the first prompt. All of these values are strings.

language_info

Language information for Kernel info replies, in a dictionary. This should contain the key mimetype with the mimetype of code in the target language (e.g. 'text/x-python'). It may also contain keys codemirror_mode and pygments_lexer if they need to differ from language.

Other keys may be added to this later.

do_execute(code, silent, store_history=True, user_expressions=None, allow_stdin=False)

Execute user code.

Parameters:

• code (str) – The code to be executed.
• silent (bool) – Whether to display output.
• store_history (bool) – Whether to record this code in history and increase the execution count. If silent is True, this is implicitly False.
• user_expressions (dict) – Mapping of names to expressions to evaluate after the code has run. You can ignore this if you need to.
• allow_stdin (bool) – Whether the frontend can provide input on request (e.g. for Python’s raw_input()).

Your method should return a dict containing the fields described in Execution results. To display output, it can send messages using send_response(). See Messaging in IPython for details of the different message types.

To launch your kernel, add this at the end of your module:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from IPython.kernel.zmq.kernelapp import IPKernelApp
    IPKernelApp.launch_instance(kernel_class=MyKernel)

Example

echokernel.py will simply echo any input it’s given to stdout:

from IPython.kernel.zmq.kernelbase import Kernel

class EchoKernel(Kernel):
    implementation = 'Echo'
    implementation_version = '1.0'
    language = 'no-op'
    language_version = '0.1'
    language_info = {'mimetype': 'text/plain'}
    banner = "Echo kernel - as useful as a parrot"

    def do_execute(self, code, silent, store_history=True, user_expressions=None,
                   allow_stdin=False):
        if not silent:
            stream_content = {'name': 'stdout', 'text': code}
            self.send_response(self.iopub_socket, 'stream', stream_content)

        return {'status': 'ok',
                # The base class increments the execution count
                'execution_count': self.execution_count,
                'payload': [],
                'user_expressions': {},
               }

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from IPython.kernel.zmq.kernelapp import IPKernelApp
    IPKernelApp.launch_instance(kernel_class=EchoKernel)

Here’s the Kernel spec kernel.json file for this:

{"argv":["python","-m","echokernel", "-f", "{connection_file}"],
 "display_name":"Echo",
}

Optional steps

You can override a number of other methods to improve the functionality of your kernel. All of these methods should return a dictionary as described in the relevant section of the messaging spec.

class MyKernel

do_complete(code, cusor_pos)

Code completion

Parameters:

• code (str) – The code already present
• cursor_pos (int) – The position in the code where completion is requested

See also

Completion messages

do_inspect(code, cusor_pos, detail_level=0)

Object introspection

Parameters:

• code (str) – The code
• cursor_pos (int) – The position in the code where introspection is requested
• detail_level (int) – 0 or 1 for more or less detail. In IPython, 1 gets the source code.

See also

Introspection messages

do_history(hist_access_type, output, raw, session=None, start=None, stop=None, n=None, pattern=None, unique=False)

History access. Only the relevant parameters for the type of history request concerned will be passed, so your method definition must have defaults for all the arguments shown with defaults here.

See also

History messages

do_is_complete(code)

Is code entered in a console-like interface complete and ready to execute, or should a continuation prompt be shown?

Parameters:code (str) – The code entered so far - possibly multiple lines

See also

Code completeness messages

do_shutdown(restart)

Shutdown the kernel. You only need to handle your own clean up - the kernel machinery will take care of cleaning up its own things before stopping.

Parameters:restart (bool) – Whether the kernel will be started again afterwards

See also

Kernel shutdown messages