qtconsole not rendering pandas dataframes as html notebook_repr_html option

Question

I recently upgraded my version of pandas. I have the latest stable version installed now:

pd.__version__
Out[5]: '0.10.1'

prior to this upgrade, this is how dataframes were displayed in the qtconsole shell (this isn't my screenshot but simply one i found on the web).

The latest version of pandas also uses a different approach to setting the display options.

Rather than using pd.set_printoptions, pandas wants you to use the set_option configs like this:

pd.set_option('display.notebook_repr_html', True)

After upgrading my pandas version, qtconsole no longer renders dataframes as html tables.

An example:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

pd.set_option('display.notebook_repr_html', True)
pd.set_option('display.expand_frame_repr', True)
pd.set_option('display.precision', 3)
pd.set_option('display.line_width', 100)
pd.set_option('display.max_rows', 50)
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', 10)
pd.set_option('display.max_colwidth', 15)

When I create a DataFrame...

f = lambda x: x*np.random.rand()
data = {"a": pd.Series(np.arange(10) ** 2 ),
        "b": pd.Series(map(f, np.ones(10))) }
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
df

This is what I see in the qtconsole shell:

Out[4]: 
    a     b
0   0  0.15
1   1  0.74
2   4  0.81
3   9  0.94
4  16  0.40
5  25  0.03
6  36  0.40
7  49  0.43
8  64  0.56
9  81  0.14

You can check how your display configs are currently set:

opts = ["max_columns", 
        "max_rows", 
        "line_width", 
        "max_colwidth", 
        "notebook_repr_html", 
        "pprint_nest_depth", 
        "expand_frame_repr" ]

for opt in opts:
    print opt, pd.get_option(opt)

Out[5]
max_columns 10
max_rows 50
line_width 100
max_colwidth 15
notebook_repr_html True
pprint_nest_depth 3
expand_frame_repr True

What am I missing in order to render the prettified html tables in qtconsole?

Luedtke

Answer 1

As far as I know, the notebook_repr_html option only applies to the actual IPython Notebook and not the QTConsole.

In the QTConsole, you can do:

from IPython.display import HTML
import numpy as np
import pandas

df = pandas.DataFrame(np.random.normal(size=(75,5)))
HTML(df.to_html())

One problem you might encounter is if the HTML is too long for your QTConsole's buffer. In that case nothing will show up, in my experience.

Upshaw

The frontend in use shouldn't be visible to pandas, though. @hernamesbarbara, have you tried using pandas in an IPython notebook since you upgraded? – Maure

Yes I have. The web notebook works just as I'd expect it to. Observing the issue specifically in the qtconsole but not in the notebook is part of what I found strange. The behavior used to be the same in both qtconsole and notebook. I'm seeing the same thing in both my windows environment at work and my mac. – Luedtke

One quick thing, @paul. Your answer definitely works, but i did need to make a small change. Instead of importing html, I'm importing HTML (uppercase). – Luedtke

@Luedtke thanks for catching that. sorry for the confusion -- i've edited the response. One last thought: start a fresh QTConsle, maximize it, and then import pandas. I seem to recall something about pandas being aware of the size of the console window. – Upshaw

It would be great to have html repr as good as notebook in the qtconsole. presumably non trivial... :S @ThomasK – Marek

@AndyHayden : The HTML rendering in the Qt rich text widget is pretty limited. We could embed webkit and write a fully web based UI, but that would be a major rewrite of the Qt console. We have an idea for a web console embedded in the notebook, though, so it's not impossible. – Maure

I only get Out[14]: <IPython.core.display.HTML object> but I don't see anything. Did I miss something? – Glim