Tips and Tricks

Converting a Jupyter Notebook into a Python script

Run this command in your terminal.

jupyter nbconvert --to script <filename>.ipynb

Pasting text in a Workspace terminal

You can paste text in your clipboard into a terminal using the Ctrl + Shift + V shortcut key.

The following don't work:

• Right click -> Paste
• Ctrl + V

Diff-ing Notebooks inside Workspace

If you have multiple versions of Notebooks, you can go an intelligent diff on the content (rather than the raw JSON) using the (nbdime plugin)[https://nbdime.readthedocs.io/en/stable/].

Instructions: Run the following commands inside your Workspace console

pip install nbdime
nbdiff <file>.ipynb <file2>.ipynb

Collapsing large Notebook cell output

You can collapse cell outputs by clicking on the blue bar on the left

Parsing command line arguments in Python scripts

Use the argparse library.

Example:

import os
from argparse import ArgumentParser

def build_parser():
    parser = ArgumentParser()
    
    # Attributes: Required argument, type=string
    parser.add_argument('--checkpoint-dir', type=str,
                        dest='checkpoint_dir', help='dir to save checkpoint in',
                        required=True)
    
    # Attributes: Optional argument, type=string
    parser.add_argument('--train-path', type=str,
                        dest='train_path', help='path to training images folder',
                        default='/floyd/input/train')
    
    # Attributes: boolean variable
    parser.add_argument('--slow', dest='slow', action='store_true',
                        help='gatys\' approach (for debugging, not supported)',
                        default=False)
    
    # Attributes: int variable, with default value
    parser.add_argument('--epochs', type=int,
                        dest='epochs', help='num epochs',
                        default=100)
    
    # Attributes: float variable, with default value
    parser.add_argument('--content-weight', type=float,
                        dest='content_weight',
                        help='content weight (default %(default)s)',
                        default=0.75)
    
    return parser

def check_opts(opts):
    assert os.path.exists(opts.checkpoint_dir), "checkpoint dir not found!"
    assert opts.epochs > 0
    
def main():
    parser = build_parser()
    options = parser.parse_args()
    check_opts(options)
    print("Num epochs: ", options.epochs)

View the complete API of the add_argument method

To check in your Workspace code to a new Git repo

git init
git config user.name "ENTER_USERNAME"
git config user.email "ENTER_EMAIL"
git add .
git commit -m "First commit"
# Create a new repo on Github: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-new-repository/
git remote add origin <<URL>> # Replace URL with your git URL (e.g. https://github.com/floydhub/mnist-demo.git)
git push origin master
# Enter your username and password. NOTE: If you have 2-factor auth (2FA) enabled on GitHub, you need to use a personal access token (https://github.com/settings/tokens) instead of a password.

Use .gitignore to ignore files you don't want to check in

FloydHub automatically creates a .gitignore file for you. If you have files that you don't want to check in (e.g. data, models, Jupyter Notebook checkpoints, etc.), you can add them to it.

Note: .gitignore is a hidden file. You can open it from your Workspace Terminal using the nano terminal editor command.

root@floydhub:/floyd/home#  nano .gitignore