Make featured notebook sources a frontend launch param

[fonsp]

This is necessary to render the featured notebooks directly on our WIP website :)

You can test it:

http://localhost:1234/?featured_source_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmit-c25.netlify.app%2Fpluto_export.json

This will show the regular index page, but with the notebooks from https://mit-c25.netlify.app/ as source! (These don't have images, because no image URLs are given in the frontmatters in that repository.)

Matching PlutoSliderServer PR:

• Option to use Pluto's Featured GUI as index html JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#100

[github-actions]

Try this Pull Request!

Open Julia and type:

julia> import Pkg
julia> Pkg.activate(temp=true)
julia> Pkg.add(url="https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl", rev="featured-sources-as-index-launch-param")
julia> using Pluto

[fonsp]

@pankgeorg You could add an option between 2 and 3 to overload the sources with those from juliahub. Something like:

// Option 1: configured directly
launch_params.featured_sources ??
// Option 2: configured through url and integrity strings
(launch_params.featured_source_url
    ? [{ url: launch_params.featured_source_url, integrity: launch_params.featured_source_integrity }]
    : // Option 3: overloaded by environment
      environment.featured_sources ??
        // Option 4: default
        default_featured_sources.sources

[fonsp]

Because this PR adds the launch_params.featured_sources config, but for JH integration the environment seems better suited, right?

[BioTurboNick]

How do we use this? I was thinking it would be an argument to Pluto.run() somewhere but I'm not seeing anything like that. Do we need to hand-generate the json file being used? Or I'm misunderstanding what this is for.

I was hoping it could be used to present a series of read-only templates that people can save and then edit.

[BioTurboNick]

@fonsp Just checking on this - is this parameter exposed to the Pluto.run() method somehow?

[fonsp]

Hey Nick!

This is a "launch parameter" to the Pluto GUI, which is different from the Pluto.run(...) options, which mostly control the server. (The reason that there is a second set of settings is that you can also use the Pluto GUI without a server, like in an HTML export.)

The list of launch parameters is here:

• For the editor: https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl/blob/v0.19.31/frontend/editor.js#L28-L61
• For the main menu: https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl/blob/v0.19.31/frontend/index.js#L8-L28

There are three ways you can set the launch parameters:

• As global javascript variables, defined before the editor loads. This is used when you click the "Export HTML" button inside Pluto. Generate an HTML and open it with a text editor to see how it works.
• As URL parameters: one place where this is used is when you click on a featured notebook in the Pluto main menu. It opens editor.html, but the path to the statefile, notebook file, etc is given with URL query paramaters. Open a featured notebook and look at the URL to see it.
• As HTML attributes to the <pluto-editor> web component. This is used in https://computationalthinking.mit.edu/ . Check out view-source:https://computationalthinking.mit.edu/Fall23/images_abstractions/abstraction/ to see an example.

---

For you use case, you probably want to generate a URL like I did in my original post and give that to people (use encodeURIComponent in JS or URIs.jl), or you can create an online website like featured.plutojl.org where people download the template files from.

The JSON file is generated automatically by PlutoSliderServer since JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#68 . JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#100 makes it possible to run a website like featured.plutojl.org yourself, where you see an index page in the style of Pluto's main menu. Check out https://github.com/JuliaPluto/featured to learn more about frontmatter and pluto_export_configuration.json.

[BioTurboNick]

Thanks for the all the details! I'm not great with JS/HTML so I'm struggling a bit.

I'd rather not change what URL people use, I just want to provide a different default for the main page. Is it that the frontend can't really be modified by the server? Can I just change the source file, like .julia/packages/Pluto/xxxxx? I guess I'd just have to beware of updates reverting it...

[fonsp]

Maybe you could just fork Pluto and edit the featured_sources.js file?

[BioTurboNick]

I'd rather not have to maintain a repo just for this.

[fonsp]

Alright, let me know if I can help in another way