Creating and Using Virtual Environment on Jupyter Notebook

A Step-by-Step Guide to Isolating Your Python Projects

When working on Python projects, it’s essential to have an organized and isolated environment to manage dependencies and avoid conflicts. Virtual environments provide a way to achieve this isolation. Jupyter Notebook is a popular interactive environment for running and visualizing Python code. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through creating and using virtual environments in Jupyter Notebook.

What is a Virtual Environment?

A virtual environment is an isolated Python environment where you can install packages and dependencies without affecting other projects or the global Python installation. It allows you to maintain a separate version of each dependency for each project, ensuring that each project works as intended without interference from other projects’ dependencies.

Getting Started: Creating a Virtual Environment

Before diving into Jupyter Notebook, let’s create a virtual environment. To do this, you’ll need to have Python and the virtualenv package installed on your system. If you haven’t installed them yet, you can find the installation instructions at the official Python website and virtualenv package documentation.

• Open a terminal or command prompt and navigate to the directory where you want to create your virtual environment.
• To create the virtual environment, run the following command:

virtualenv venv

• Replace venv with the name you prefer for your virtual environment. This command will create a new folder with the specified name containing the virtual environment files.
• Activate the virtual environment by running the appropriate command for your operating system:
• Windows: venv
• macOS/Linux: source venv/bin/activate

Once activated, the virtual environment will be used for any Python package installations and commands.

Installing Jupyter Notebook in the Virtual Environment

Now that you have your virtual environment set up, it’s time to install Jupyter Notebook. Run the following command:

pip install jupyter

This command will install Jupyter Notebook and its dependencies in your virtual environment.

Using Jupyter Notebook with the Virtual Environment

To start Jupyter Notebook, run the following command:

jupyter notebook

This will launch the Jupyter Notebook server and open the Jupyter Notebook dashboard in your default web browser. You can now create new notebooks or open existing ones.

To ensure your Jupyter Notebook is using the virtual environment’s kernel, follow these steps:

1. Create a new notebook or open an existing one.
2. In the notebook, click on the ‘Kernel’ menu, and then select ‘Change kernel’.
3. Choose the kernel associated with your virtual environment. The kernel’s name should match the name of your virtual environment.

That’s it! Your Jupyter Notebook is now running inside your virtual environment, and any packages you install or import will be from the virtual environment.

Conclusion

Creating and using virtual environments in Jupyter Notebook is a crucial step for maintaining organized, isolated Python projects. By following this guide, you can create a virtual environment, install Jupyter Notebook, and use it with the virtual environment’s kernel. This will help you manage dependencies and avoid conflicts, making your projects more manageable and reliable. Happy coding!