JuptyerLab Dockerized

A full blogpost is written on this repo on my personal site here

How To Use

This repository provides an easy way to Dockerize a Jupyter Lab project. Annotate your dependencies in the requirements.txt, and then run $ docker compose up. The output of that command will emit a URL, with a token, which you can use to access the Jupyter Lab instance in your web browser. For example, it might look like:

jupyterlab-1  |     To access the server, open this file in a browser:
jupyterlab-1  |         file:///home/jovyan/.local/share/jupyter/runtime/jpserver-7-open.html
jupyterlab-1  |     Or copy and paste one of these URLs:
jupyterlab-1  |         http://c6bcfb18cb93:8888/lab?token=somefaketoken
jupyterlab-1  |         http://127.0.0.1:8888/lab?token=somefaketoken

Then you'd navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8888/lab?token=somefaketoken or localhost:8888/lab?token=somefaketoken in your web browser.

Diclaimers

1. You'll notice that you have one directory labeled work. Please be aware that only the files you write into this directory will actually be saved, as this is the only directly that is volumed into the container by our docker-compose.yaml file.
2. If you want to install a new dependency, the easiest way is to modify the requirements.txt and restart the container. If that is to heavy handed, you can modify the requirements.txt, which will set you up for future exectuions, and then access a terminal inside the Jupyter Lab instance to install the dependency for this session.

How Does This Work

We're relying on an existing Docker image called jupyter/minimal-notebook. This image has a slew of common features documented here. We're taking advantage of the Startup Hooks, to ensure that your Python dependencies are automatically installed for us when we spin up a container.

Selecting A Docker Image

I've decided to leverage this image, but you can read through this documentation to select your own. Be sure to change the image line in your docker-compose.yaml if you want to make a modification.