Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with something totally new – Jupyter Book. I’d heard about it, seen some cool examples, and figured, “Why not?” I needed a way to neatly package up some of my data analysis projects, and this seemed like it could be a good fit.
First things first, I installed it. Since I’m already in the Python world, it was pretty simple using pip. I just opened up my terminal and typed:
pip install jupyter-book
Easy peasy. Then, I created a basic book structure. You can apparently start from scratch, but they have a template, which seemed like a smarter move for a newbie like me. Back in the terminal:
jupyter-book create mynewbook/
This generated a bunch of files and folders – a for settings, a for the table of contents, and some sample Markdown and Jupyter Notebook files. It’s like getting a pre-built house frame; you still gotta decorate, but the hard part’s done.
Next, I started customizing. That file is where you set the book’s title, author, logo, and all that jazz. It’s written in YAML, which I’m kinda familiar with, so I just opened it in my text editor and started tweaking things.
The table of contents, in , was a little trickier. I had to figure out the structure I wanted – which notebooks were chapters, which were sections, and so on. It’s basically a list of files and titles, but getting the indentation and nesting right took a bit of trial and error.
- I spent a while copy past my markdown notes, ipynb into it.
- And I try to use list all of them.
Once I had some content in place, I built the book. Again, back to the terminal:
jupyter-book build mynewbook/
This command does all the magic – it converts the Markdown and Jupyter Notebooks into HTML, creates all the links, and packages everything up into a nice, readable format.
Finally, I wanted to see my creation! The build command creates a _build/html folder, and inside that, you’ll find an file. I just opened that in my browser, and bam! There was my book, all formatted and ready to go.
The process is very fun. I will share more next time.
