C# Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Commands lets you generate C# Jupyter Notebooks for calling ServiceStack APIs in a single command.

All command line utils used are available in the latest dotnet tool which can be installed from:

Or if you had a previous version installed, update with:

Generate C# Jupyter Notebooks​

Use x jupyter-csharp to display different usage examples for generating C# Jupyter Notebooks:

Usage: x jupyter-csharp <base-url>
       x jupyter-csharp <base-url> <request>
       x jupyter-csharp <base-url> <request> {js-object}
       x jupyter-csharp <base-url> <request> < body.json

Options:
 -out <file>            Save notebook to file
 -include <pattern>     Include Types DTOs pattern

The same syntax for invoking APIs with the Post Command HTTP Utils can also be used to generate C# Jupyter Notebooks, e.g:

Output:

Saved to: techstacks.io-FindTechStacks.ipynb

Setup Jupyter for C# locally​

To get working with JupyterLabs to run locally with a C# kernel, there are a few things you'll need to have installed.

• Latest dotnet 5.0+ SDK
• Python 3.7+ with pip

With both dotnet SDK and Python installed, you can then install JupyterLab, Dotnet Interactive and register the dotnet kernels with the following commands.

# Install jupyterlab to default Python interpreter
pip install jupyterlab
# Install Dotnet Interactive dotnet tool
dotnet tool install -g Microsoft.dotnet-interactive
# Get Dotnet Interactive to register kernels with Jupyter  
dotnet interactive jupyter install

To verify these have been installed successfully, you can list the currently registered kernels using the command.

This should list .net-csharp as one of the kernels which is what the C# notebooks will use.

Running JupyterLab​

With everything setup, navigate to a local directory with your notebooks and run:

The context of where this command is run from matter as JupyterLab will mount list files in the same directory is was run, so make sure your running the jupyter-lab command from where your notebooks are located or where you new notebooks to be saved.

Example generated notebook​

From your notebook directory that JupyterLab is using, open a new command prompt/terminal and run:

This will generate the file covid_vac_watch.netcore.io-QueryVaccinationRates.ipynb in that directory. This file has everything that is needed to call the QueryVaccinationRates service and display data in the response.

Visualize the data​

These generated notebooks are designed to be a starting point with all the data plumbing setup done for you. Taking this example further, we can visualize the data using Plotly.NET, a NuGet library that generates plotly.js visuals using .NET. Run at least the first two cells and then add a new cell at the bottom of the generated notebook with the following code.

#r "nuget: Plotly.NET, 2.0.0-preview.6"
#r "nuget: Plotly.NET.Interactive, 2.0.0-preview.6"

using Plotly.NET;

var xData = response.Results.Select(x => x.Date).ToList();
var yData = response.Results.Select(x => x.DailyVaccinations == null ? 0 : (decimal)(x.DailyVaccinations)).ToList();

GenericChart.GenericChart chart = Chart.Point<DateTime,decimal, string>(x: xData, y: yData, Name: "");
chart
    .WithTraceName("Daily Vaccinations", true)
    .WithX_AxisStyle(title: "Vaccinations", Showgrid: false, Showline: true)
    .WithY_AxisStyle(title: "Date", Showgrid: false, Showline: true);
display(chart);

The code above does several things.

• Import the 2 required Plotly.NET NuGet dependencies.
• Declares using statement.
• Transforms response data into 2 equal list of primitive data.
• Generates a plot with Date on the X axis and DailyVaccinations on the Y axis.

Try it out yourself using MyBinder with generated notebooks​

Another way to work with Jupyter, C# and ServiceStack generated notebooks is to do with via MyBinder. MyBinder is a free hosted service that gives you an isolated docker container to run your notebooks if you are just trying something out.

• Click on the Launch Binder badge above and wait for it to launch into a Jupyter web UI (it can take a min or two sometimes)
• Goto New and select Terminal.
• In the terminal use the ServiceStack x tool to generate a new C# notebook like before
  • x jupyter-csharp https://covid-vac-watch.netcore.io QueryVaccinationRates
• Navigate back to Jupyter file explorer and see your generated notebook.
• Open the new notebook and run the generated cells.
• Add a new cell with the same code for Plotly.NET as above and run