Migrating custom widget libraries

These are migration guides specifically for developers of third-party widgets.

Migrating from 7.x to 8.0

In this section, we discuss migrating a custom widget from ipywidgets 7 to ipywidgets 8 or supporting both ipywidgets 7 and ipywidgets 8 with the same codebase.

For a summarized list of changes affecting custom widget authors, please see the "Developers" section of the changelog for 8.0.

Please consider updating your widget by generating a new widget from the JavaScript widget cookiecutter and adapting the code to your widget, since the cookiecutter has been updated to use best practices in Python packaging and Jupyter Widget infrastructure.

For example migrations, see these PRs:

Updating setup.py

Start by updating the dependency in your setup.py or setup.cfg to support 8.x.

e.g.

 install_requires=[
-    'ipywidgets>=7,<8',
+    'ipywidgets>=7,<9',
 ],

Updating package.json

Next, you should update the JavaScript dependencies. You will need to update your @jupyter-widgets/base dependency and the @jupyter-widgets/controls if you depend on it.

The diff will look like the following in case you still want to support ipywidgets<8:

- "@jupyter-widgets/base": "^2 || ^3 || ^4",
+ "@jupyter-widgets/base": "^2 || ^3 || ^4 || ^5 || ^6",

You can also apply the following diff if you only want to support ipywidgets==8 from now on:

- "@jupyter-widgets/base": "^2 || ^3 || ^4",
+ "@jupyter-widgets/base": "^6",

Note that "@jupyter-widgets/base" version 5 is reserved for ipywidgets 7 support on JupyterLab 4, "@jupyter-widgets/base" version 6 is the version released with ipywidgets 8.

The ManagerBase class has been split into an interface type IWidgetManager which remains in the @jupyter-widgets/base package, and its implementation which has moved to the new @jupyter-widgets/base-manager package. So if you subclass the ManagerBase class, you will need to add a new dependency in your package.json as following, and update your imports accordingly.

+ "@jupyter-widgets/base-manager": "^1",

Updating the webpack `publicPath` configuration

We highly encourage you to update your widget's webpack configuration for publicPath, which is used in generating AMD modules, with changes similar to these changes. These changes allow your AMD module to be hosted anywhere, rather than hardcoding the a particular CDN like unpkg.com, and they simplify things by removing the differences between the AMD module generated for the notebook extension and the AMD module generated for the CDN.

Updating the browser code

Phosphor -> Lumino

The Phosphor library has been archived. It has been forked and renamed Lumino, and the maintenance is now done under the JupyterLab governance.

If you used to import classes like JupyterPhosphorPanelWidget and JupyterPhosphorWidget from the @jupyter-widgets/base library, you will need to update them:

- import { JupyterPhosphorPanelWidget, JupyterPhosphorWidget } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';
+ import { JupyterLuminoPanelWidget, JupyterLuminoWidget } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';

The DOMWidgetView.pWidget property has been renamed DOMWidgetView.luminoWidget (though an alias for pWidget is available for conveniance):

- this.pWidget
+ this.luminoWidget

The DOMWidgetView.processPhosphorMessage method has been renamed DOMWidgetView.processLuminoMessage. If you want to support both ipywidgets 7.x and 8.x, you should implement both methods and call the correct super method:

- processPhosphorMessage(msg: Message): void {
-     super.processPhosphorMessage(msg);
-     switch (msg.type) {
-     case 'resize':
-         this.resize();
-         break;
-     }
- }
+ _processLuminoMessage(msg: Message, _super: (msg: Message) => void): void {
+     _super.call(this, msg);
+     switch (msg.type) {
+     case 'resize':
+         this.resize();
+         break;
+     }
+ }
+
+ processPhosphorMessage(msg: Message): void {
+     this._processLuminoMessage(msg, super.processPhosphorMessage);
+ }
+
+ processLuminoMessage(msg: Message): void {
+     this._processLuminoMessage(msg, super.processLuminoMessage);
+ }

If you're dropping ipywidgets 7.x support, you can simply rename the processPhosphorMessage method to processLuminoMessage.

Widget manager import

As mentioned before, if you depend on the ManagerBase class, you will either need to update the import:

- import { ManagerBase } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';
+ import { ManagerBase } from '@jupyter-widgets/base-manager';

or, switch to using the new IWidgetManager interface in the base package:

- import { ManagerBase } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';
+ import { IWidgetManager } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';

Which one to pick depends on how you use it. If you are using it as the base class for your own implementation of a widget manager, and want to subclass it in order to reuse the methods/logic in that implementation, you should depend on the base-manager package. If you are only interested in the TypeScript type for a widget manager, e.g. for use in the arguments of a deserializer function, you should use the IWidgetManager interface type.

Typescript trick: If you need to support a deserializer function against both ipywidgets 7 and older and the new version 8, you can change your deserializer function to have the following signature:

- import { ManagerBase } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';
+ import { unpack_models } from '@jupyter-widgets/base';

export async function myDeserializer(
  obj: MyObjectType,
-  manager?: ManagerBase
+  manager?: Parameters<typeof unpack_models>[1]
): Promise<JSONValue> {

Backbone extend

The version of Backbone.js that ipywidgets depends on has changed from 1.2.3 to 1.4.0. If you were extending the base widget model with var CustomWidgetModel = Widget.extend({ ... }); you will need to update the class definition using the ES6 notation:

- var CustomWidgetModel = Widget.extend({
-     ...
- });
+ class CustomWidgetModel extends Widget {
+     ...
+ }

If you were using .extend(), you will also need to change how your model attribute defaults are defined. The model defaults are now given by a function that returns the defaults and includes the superclass defaults. For example, the Output widget model looks like this:

export const OUTPUT_WIDGET_VERSION = '1.0.0';

export class OutputModel extends DOMWidgetModel {
  defaults() {
    return {
      ...super.defaults(),
      _model_name: 'OutputModel',
      _view_name: 'OutputView',
      _model_module: '@jupyter-widgets/output',
      _view_module: '@jupyter-widgets/output',
      _model_module_version: OUTPUT_WIDGET_VERSION,
      _view_module_version: OUTPUT_WIDGET_VERSION,
    };
  }
}

Custom tag names

If you were changing the base HTML tag for your widget by defining the tagName property, this can now be done in ipywidgets 8 in the preinitialize method (see here for example changes in core widgets):

- get tagName() {
-   return 'button';
- }
+ preinitialize() {
+   this.tagName = 'button';
+ }

If you need compatibility with ipywidgets 7, continue using the get tagName accessor instead of preinitialize. However, newer versions of Typescript will complain that you are overriding a property with a function. If you want to maintain compatibility with both ipywidgets 7 and ipywidgets 8, and you are using Typescript, you can add a ts-ignore directive to mollify Typescript, like is done in ipydatawidgets:

+ // @ts-ignore: 2611
  get tagName() {
    return 'button';
  }

Migrating from 6.0 to 7.0

For example migrations, see these PRs:

To avoid tying your development cycle to ipywidgets, we recommend starting the migration on a branch and keeping that branch open until ipywidgets 7.0 is released.

We also recommend testing the migration in a completely new notebook, rather than one that contains widgets that you instantiated with ipywidgets 6.0.

Updating setup.py

Start by updating the dependency in your setup.py to the latest release. To find the correct version number, go to the releases page on Github and cycle through the tags until you see the latest 7.0.0 tag.

Updating package.json

Next, we should update the JavaScript dependencies. The most important change for widget developers is that the JavaScript package for jupyter-widgets has been split between @jupyter-widgets/base and @jupyter-widgets/controls:

@jupyter-widgets/base contains the base widget classes and the layout classes
@jupyter-widgets/controls contains the widget classes for the user-facing widgets.

In your package.json, remove jupyter-js-widgets from your dependencies and add @jupyter-widgets/base. To find the correct version, go to the releases page and cycle through the tags until you see a tag called @jupyter-widgets/base@<version>. Do the same for @jupyter-widgets/controls if you think you have a dependency on it (e.g. if you create widgets that inherit from VBox or HBox or another user-facing widget).

Updating Webpack configuration

If you use Webpack to build the client-side library, your Webpack configuration file (probably at js/webpack.config.json) declares jupyter-js-widgets as an external dependency. You will need to change this in both the bundle for the notebook and the embeddable bundle. If you just need @jupyter-widgets/base, your external dependencies would be:

externals: ['@jupyter-widgets/base']

If you need both @jupyter-widgets/base and @jupyter-widgets/controls, include both packages in the array.

The cookiecutter template provides a sample configuration.

Updating the client-side code

If you now build the client-side code of your library, you will get many errors about missing jupyter-js-widgets dependencies. You need to replace every import of jupyter-js-widgets with an import of @jupyter-widgets/base (or, possibly, an import of @jupyter-widgets/controls).

Your imports should now look like one of the following (depending on how you normally import other modules):

widgets = require('@jupyter-widgets/base');

require(['@jupyter-widgets/base'], function (widgets) {});

import * as widgets from '@jupyter-widgets/base';

All your widget models should also declare the attributes _view_module_version and _model_module_version. A minimal model now looks like:

var HelloModel = widgets.DOMWidgetModel.extend({
  defaults: _.extend(widgets.DOMWidgetModel.prototype.defaults(), {
    _model_name: 'HelloModel',
    _view_name: 'HelloView',
    _model_module: 'example_module',
    _view_module: 'example_module',
    _model_module_version: '~1.0.0',
    _view_module_version: '~1.0.0',
  }),
});

For embedding to work correctly, the module version needs to be a semantic version range that matches a release on NPM. The most common pattern is to request a version compatible with the version currently in your package.json by using, ~{{ version number }} for _model_module_version and _view_module_version. See the cookiecutter template for details.

Since you probably want to avoid repeating the module version in every widget, a common pattern is to import the version from package.json and prepend a ~. See ipyvolume for an example. If you do this, make sure that your webpack configuration includes a JSON loader. See the Webpack configuration for ipyvolume for an example.

Updating the notebook extension

Previously, the notebook extension (normally js/src/extension.js) required defining jupyter-js-widgets in the configuration for requirejs. This is no longer needed. See the cookiecutter template for an example of the correct requirejs configuration.

Updating the Python code

All widgets need to declare the following six traitlets:

class ExampleWidget(widgets.Widget):
    _model_name = Unicode('name of model in JS')
    _view_name = Unicode('name of view in JS')
    _model_module = Unicode('name your JS package')
    _view_module = Unicode('name your JS package')
    _model_module_version = Unicode('version of your JS bundle')
    _view_module_version = Unicode('version of your JS bundle')

It is likely that your widgets already declared a _model_name, _view_name, _model_module and _view_module. The _model_module and _view_module should be the name of your package on NPM (the value of the name field in your package.json). The _model_module_version and _view_module_version should be the version of your JavaScript client (the values of the version field in your package.json).

The _model_module_version and _view_module_version are used to find your JavaScript bundle when embedding widgets. The embed manager will look for the bundle at https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/<module-name>@<module-version>/dist/index.js when it finds a widget.

Updating embedded widgets

There are now two options for embedding widgets in an HTML page outside of the notebook.

Embedding the standard widgets

If you are just embedding the standard widgets that come with ipywidgets, then you can simply include the following script tag:

<script
  src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@jupyter-widgets/html-manager@*/dist/embed.js"
  crossorigin="anonymous"
></script>

If you want to use a specific version of the embedder, you replace the @* with a semver range, such as @^0.9.0

Embedding custom widgets with RequireJS

In order to embed third-party widgets, you can use the RequireJS-based embedding. First, make sure that RequireJS is loaded on the page, for example:

<!-- Load require.js. Delete this if your page already loads require.js -->
<script
  src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.3.4/require.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-Ae2Vz/4ePdIu6ZyI/5ZGsYnb+m0JlOmKPjt6XZ9JJkA="
  crossorigin="anonymous"
></script>

Then include the following script, which defines the embedding libraries and runs the function to render widgets:

<script
  src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@jupyter-widgets/html-manager@*/dist/embed-amd.js"
  crossorigin="anonymous"
></script>

If you want to use a specific version of the embedder, you replace the @* with a semver range, such as @^0.9.0

If you need to embed custom widgets without using RequireJS, you'll need to compile your own embedding javascript that includes the third-party libraries.

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Migrating custom widget libraries

Migrating from 7.x to 8.0

Updating setup.py

Updating package.json

Updating the webpack `publicPath` configuration

Updating the browser code

Phosphor -> Lumino

Widget manager import

Backbone extend

Custom tag names

Migrating from 6.0 to 7.0

Updating setup.py

Updating package.json

Updating Webpack configuration

Updating the client-side code

Updating the notebook extension

Updating the Python code

Updating embedded widgets

Embedding the standard widgets

Embedding custom widgets with RequireJS

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Migrating custom widget libraries

Migrating from 7.x to 8.0

Updating setup.py

Updating package.json

Updating the webpack publicPath configuration

Updating the browser code

Phosphor -> Lumino

Widget manager import

Backbone extend

Custom tag names

Migrating from 6.0 to 7.0

Updating setup.py

Updating package.json

Updating Webpack configuration

Updating the client-side code

Updating the notebook extension

Updating the Python code

Updating embedded widgets

Embedding the standard widgets

Embedding custom widgets with RequireJS

Updating the webpack `publicPath` configuration