Prototype UI integration with Jupyter widget

[filippomc]

The idea behind is to allow NWB jupyter widgets visualizations to be used as visualizer for nwb types. With this integration, the NWB Explorer will greatly expand the support on NWB types. Jupyter widgets should be exported to be used outside a jupyter notebook context.

• [x] Evaluate Voila or other alternative librariy that created a exportable version of a jupyter widget
• [x] Create a PoC of widget embedding

[filippomc]

proof of concept: very simple integration showing a box with whatever is coming from the jupyter widget

[pgleeson]

@filippomc Is this live on staging?

[filippomc]

@pgleeson this is not live as it's not really workable, but you can try on branch sprint-9-poc. The solution is based on jupyter widgets html embedding: https://ipywidgets.readthedocs.io/en/latest/embedding.html#python-interface

Problems to solve:

• Jupyter widgets uses inline matplotlib to show plots: https://github.com/NeurodataWithoutBorders/nwb-jupyter-widgets/blob/8bfd28beed63158f744a7ab7e0984c63dadd12dd/nwbwidgets/base.py#L227. Those plots are not being shown in a jupyter widget export: trying it on a desktop installation plots are shown in a popup as if running matplotlib from the command line, while get an error on a server/containerized installation. A solution for this would be to patch jupyter widgets to use a different solution, either with matplotlib or other library, that inlines the outputs instead.
• Lazy loading. Exported widgets do not support lazy loading behaviours. They are pure js/html so don't have access to the notebook data. The only solution I can think of for this is to investigate jupyter internals and develop the embedding feature directly integrated with the notebook. This would need a consistent time investment. The good is this investigation would be useful to develop other stable interactive features (yes we have a working synchronization for netpyne but cannot be used to display widgets).

[filippomc]

moved back to backlog.

[pgleeson]

No problem, just saw it closed and checking...

[filippomc]

Yes thanks was a mistake. Caught the occasion to write something to plan the next moves :)