anywidget: reusable widgets for interactive analysis and visualization in computational notebooks

Abstract

The anywidget project provides a specification and toolset for creating portable web-based widgets for computational notebooks. It defines a standard for front-end widget code using ECMAScript modules and offers tools for authoring, distributing, and executing these modules across Jupyter-compatible platforms (e.g., JupyterLab, Google Colab, VS Code). The project has spurred the creation of many interactive visualization libraries and has been integrated into existing ones. The standard has been embraced by other computational notebooks, web frameworks, and publishing platforms, extending the reach of interactive widgets beyond the Jupyter ecosystem.

Citation

T Manz, N Abdennur, N Gehlenborg. “anywidget: reusable widgets for interactive analysis and visualization in computational notebooks”, Journal of Open Source Software 9(102):6939 (2024). doi:10.21105/joss.06939