Reads a notebook from a file or stdin, strips output and some metadata, and writes the "cleaned" version of the notebook to the original file or stdout.
Intended to be used as a Git filter or pre-commit hook for users who don't want to track output in Git.
Roughly equivalent to the "Clear All Output" command in the notebook UI, but only "visible" to Git: keep your output in the file on disk, but don't commit the output to Git. This helps minimizing diffs and reduce file size.
Originally based on https://gist.github.com/minrk/6176788.
As of version 0.4.0, nbstripout supports Python 3 only. If you need to use Python 2.7, install nbstripout 0.3.10:
pip install nbstripout==0.3.10
This screencast demonstrates the use and working principles behind the nbstripout utility and how to use it as a Git filter:
You can download and install the latest version of nbstripout
from the Python
package index PyPI as follows:
pip install --upgrade nbstripout
When using the Anaconda Python
distribution, install nbstripout
via the conda
package manager from conda-forge:
conda install -c conda-forge nbstripout
Strip output from IPython / Jupyter / Zeppelin notebook (modifies the file in-place):
nbstripout FILE.ipynb [FILE2.ipynb ...]
nbstripout FILE.zpln
Force processing of non .ipynb
files:
nbstripout -f FILE.ipynb.bak
For using Zeppelin mode while processing files with other extensions use:
nbstripout -m zeppelin -f <file.ext>
Write to stdout e.g. to use as part of a shell pipeline:
cat FILE.ipynb | nbstripout > OUT.ipynb
cat FILE.zpln | nbstripout -m zeppelin > OUT.zpln
or
nbstripout -t FILE.ipynb | other-command
Do a dry run and only list which files would have been stripped:
nbstripout --dry-run FILE.ipynb [FILE2.ipynb ...]
Operate on all .ipynb
files in the current directory and subdirectories
recursively:
find . -name '*.ipynb' -exec nbstripout {}
Print the version:
nbstripout --version
Show help and usage instructions:
nbstripout --help
Set up the git filter and attributes as described in the manual installation instructions below:
nbstripout --install
Set up the git filter using .gitattributes
:
nbstripout --install --attributes .gitattributes
Specify a different path to the Python interpreter to be used for the git
filters (default is the path to the Python interpreter used when nbstripout
is
installed). This is useful if you have Python installed in different or unusual
locations across machines, e.g. /usr/bin/python3
on your machine vs
/usr/local/bin/python3
in a container or elsewhere.
nbstripout --install --python python3
Using just python3
lets each machine find its Python itself. However, keep in
mind that depending on your setup this might not be the Python version you want
or even fail because an absolute path is required.
Set up the git filter in your global ~/.gitconfig
:
nbstripout --install --global
Set up the git filter in your system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
(most
installations will require you to sudo
):
[sudo] nbstripout --install --system
Remove the git filter and attributes:
nbstripout --uninstall
Remove the git filter from your global ~/.gitconfig
and attributes:
nbstripout --uninstall --global
Remove the git filter from your system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
and
attributes:
[sudo] nbstripout --uninstall --system
Remove the git filter and attributes from .gitattributes
:
nbstripout --uninstall --attributes .gitattributes
Check if nbstripout
is installed in the current repository (exits with code 0
if installed, 1 otherwise):
nbstripout --is-installed
Print status of nbstripout
installation in the current repository and
configuration summary of filter and attributes if installed (exits with code 0
if installed, 1 otherwise):
nbstripout --status
The following table shows in which files the nbstripout
filter and attribute
configuration is written to for given extra flags to --install
and
--uninstall
:
flags | filters | attributes |
---|---|---|
none | .git/config |
.git/info/attributes |
--global |
~/.gitconfig |
~/.config/git/attributes |
--system |
$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig |
$(prefix)/etc/gitattributes |
--attributes=.gitattributes |
.git/config |
.gitattributes |
--global --attributes=.gitattributes |
~/.gitconfig |
.gitattributes |
Usually, nbstripout
is installed per repository so you can choose where to use
it or not. You can choose to set the attributes in .gitattributes
and commit
this file to your repository, however there is no way to have git set up the
filters automatically when someone clones a repository. This is by design, to
prevent you from executing arbitrary and potentially malicious code when cloning
a repository.
To install nbstripout
for all your repositories such that you no longer need
to run the installation once per repository, install as follows:
mkdir -p ~/.config/git # This folder may not exist
nbstripout --install --global --attributes=~/.config/git/attributes
This will set up the filters and diff driver in your ~/.gitconfig
and instruct
git to apply them to any .ipynb
file in any repository.
Note that you need to uninstall with the same flags:
nbstripout --uninstall --global --attributes=~/.config/git/attributes
To install nbstripout
system-wide so that it applies to all repositories for
all users, install as follows (most installations will require you to sudo
):
[sudo] nbstripout --install --system
This will set up the filters and diff driver in $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
and
instruct git to apply them to any .ipynb
file in any repository for any user.
Note that you need to uninstall with the same flags:
[sudo] nbstripout --uninstall --system
nbstripout
can be used to rewrite an existing Git repository using
git filter-repo
to strip output
from existing notebooks. This invocation operates on all ipynb files in the repo:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# get lint-history with callback from https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/pull/542
./lint-history.py --relevant 'return filename.endswith(b".ipynb")' --callback '
import json, warnings, nbformat
from nbstripout import strip_output
from nbformat.reader import NotJSONError
try:
with warnings.catch_warnings():
warnings.simplefilter("ignore", category=UserWarning)
notebook = nbformat.reads(blob.data, as_version=nbformat.NO_CONVERT)
# customize to your needs
strip_output(notebook, keep_output=False, keep_count=False, keep_id=False, extra_keys=["metadata.widgets","metadata.execution","cell.attachments"], drop_empty_cells=True, drop_tagged_cells=[],strip_init_cells=False, max_size=0)
old_len = len(blob.data)
blob.data = (nbformat.writes(notebook) "\n").encode("utf-8")
if old_len != len(blob.data):
print(change.blob_id, change.filename, old_len, len(blob.data))
except NotJSONError as e:
print("ERROR", type(e), change.blob_id, filename)
'
Drop empty cells i.e. cells where source
is either empty or only contains
whitespace:
nbstripout --drop-empty-cells
By default nbstripout
will keep cells with init_cell: true
metadata. To
disable this behavior use:
nbstripout --strip-init-cells
In certain conditions it might be handy to remove not only the output, but the entire cell, e.g. when developing exercises.
To drop all cells tagged with "solution" run:
nbstripout --drop-tagged-cells="solution"
The option accepts a list of tags separated by whitespace.
Do not strip the execution count/prompt number:
nbstripout --keep-count
Do not strip outputs that are smaller that a given max size (useful for removing only large outputs like images):
nbstripout --max-size 1k
Do not strip the output, only metadata:
nbstripout --keep-output
Do not reassign the cell ids to be sequential (which is the default behavior):
nbstripout --keep-id
To mark special cells so that the output is not stripped, you can either:
-
Set the
keep_output
tag on the cell. To do this, enable the tags toolbar (View > Cell Toolbar > Tags) and then add thekeep_output
tag for each cell you would like to keep the output for. -
Set the
"keep_output": true
metadata on the cell. To do this, select the "Edit Metadata" Cell Toolbar, and then use the "Edit Metadata" button on the desired cell to enter something like:{ "keep_output": true, }
You can also keep output for an entire notebook. This is useful if you want to strip output by default in an automated environment (e.g. CI pipeline), but want to be able to keep outputs for some notebooks. To do so, add the option above to the notebook metadata instead. (You can also explicitly remove outputs from a particular cell in these notebooks by adding a cell-level metadata entry.)
Another use-case is to preserve initialization cells that might load customized CSS etc. critical for the display of the notebook. To support this, we also keep output for cells with:
{
"init_cell": true,
}
This is the same metadata used by the init_cell nbextension.
The following metadata is stripped by default:
- Notebook metadata:
signature
,widgets
- Cell metadata:
ExecuteTime
,collapsed
,execution
,heading_collapsed
,hidden
,scrolled
Additional metadata to be stripped can be configured via either
-
git config (--global/--system) filter.nbstripout.extrakeys
, e.g. :git config --global filter.nbstripout.extrakeys ' metadata.celltoolbar metadata.kernelspec metadata.language_info.codemirror_mode.version metadata.language_info.pygments_lexer metadata.language_info.version metadata.toc metadata.notify_time metadata.varInspector cell.metadata.heading_collapsed cell.metadata.hidden cell.metadata.code_folding cell.metadata.tags cell.metadata.init_cell'
-
the
--extra-keys
flag, which takes a space-delimited string as an argument, e.g. :--extra-keys="metadata.celltoolbar cell.metadata.heading_collapsed"
Note: Only notebook and cell metadata is currently supported and every key
specified via filter.nbstripout.extrakeys
or --extra-keys
must start with
metadata.
for notebook and cell.metadata.
for cell metadata.
You can keep certain metadata that would be stripped by default with either
-
git config (--global/--system) filter.nbstripout.keepmetadatakeys
, e.g.:git config --global filter.nbstripout.keepmetadatakeys ' cell.metadata.collapsed cell.metadata.scrolled'
-
the
--keep-metadata-keys
flag, which takes a space-delimited string as an argument, e.g.:--keep-metadata-keys="cell.metadata.collapsed cell.metadata.scrolled"
Note: Previous versions of Jupyter used metadata.kernel_spec
for kernel
metadata. Prefer stripping kernelspec
entirely: only stripping some attributes
inside kernelspec
may lead to errors when opening the notebook in Jupyter (see
#141).
To exclude specific files or folders from being processed by the nbstripout
filters, add the path and exception to your filter specifications defined in
.git/info/attributes
or .gitattributes
:
docs/** filter= diff=
This will disable nbstripout
for any file in the docs
directory.:
notebooks/Analysis.ipynb filter= diff=
This will disable nbstripout
for the file Analysis.ipynb
located in the
notebooks
directory.
To check which attributes a given file has with the current config, run:
git check-attr -a -- path/to/file
For a file to which the filter applies you will see the following:
$ git check-attr -a -- foo.ipynb
foo.ipynb: diff: ipynb
foo.ipynb: filter: nbstripout
For a file in your excluded folder you will see the following:
$ git check-attr -a -- docs/foo.ipynb
foo.ipynb: diff:
foo.ipynb: filter:
Set up a git filter and diff driver using nbstripout as follows:
git config filter.nbstripout.clean '/path/to/nbstripout'
git config filter.nbstripout.smudge cat
git config filter.nbstripout.required true
git config diff.ipynb.textconv '/path/to/nbstripout -t'
This will add a section to the .git/config
file of the current repository.
If you want the filter to be installed globally for your user, add the
--global
flag to the git config
invocations above to have the configuration
written to your ~/.gitconfig
and apply to all repositories.
If you want the filter to be installed system-wide, add the --system
flag to
the git config
invocations above to have the configuration written to
$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
and apply to all repositories for all users.
Create a file .gitattributes
(if you want it versioned with the repository) or
.git/info/attributes
(to apply it only to the current repository) with the
following content:
*.ipynb filter=nbstripout
*.ipynb diff=ipynb
This instructs git to use the filter named nbstripout
and the diff driver
named ipynb
set up in the git config above for every .ipynb
file in the
repository.
If you want the attributes be set for .ipynb
files in any of your git
repositories, add those two lines to ~/.config/git/attributes
. Note that this
file and the ~/.config/git
directory may not exist.
If you want the attributes be set for .ipynb
files in any git repository on
your system, add those two lines to $(prefix)/etc/gitattributes
. Note that
this file may not exist.
pre-commit is a framework for managing git pre-commit hooks.
Once you have pre-commit installed, add the following
to the .pre-commit-config.yaml
in your repository:
repos:
- repo: https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
rev: 0.7.1
hooks:
- id: nbstripout
Then run pre-commit install
to activate the hook.
Warning
In this mode, nbstripout
is used as a git hook to strip any .ipynb
files
before committing. This also modifies your working copy!
In its regular mode, nbstripout
acts as a filter and only modifies what git
gets to see for committing or diffing. The working copy stays intact.
Certain Git workflows are not well supported by nbstripout
:
- Local changes to notebook files that are made invisible to Git due to the
nbstripout
filter do still cause conflicts when attempting to sync upstream changes (git pull
,git merge
etc.). This is because Git has no way of resolving a conflict caused by a non-stripped local file being merged with a stripped upstream file. Addressing this issue is out of scope fornbstripout
. Read more and find workarounds in #108.
Git has no builtin support for
listing files a clean or smudge filter operates on. As a workaround, change the
setup of your filter in .git/config
, ~/.gitconfig
or
$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
as follows to see the filenames either filter operates
on:
[filter "nbstripout"]
clean = "f() { echo >&2 \"clean: nbstripout $1\"; nbstripout; }; f %f"
smudge = "f() { echo >&2 \"smudge: cat $1\"; cat; }; f %f"
required = true