push_notebook does not work in Google Colaboratory

Hello!

I tried to create an interactive plot with bokeh in Google Colab. The following code renders a scatter plot as expected:

from bokeh.models import ColumnDataSource
from bokeh.plotting import figure
from bokeh.io import output_notebook, push_notebook, show
import numpy as np

output_notebook(hide_banner=True)

source = ColumnDataSource(data=dict(x=np.random.rand(10), y=np.random.rand(10)))
p = figure(output_backend="webgl")
scatter = p.scatter(source=source, x='x', y='y')
handle = show(p, notebook_handle=True)

Changing the data and calling push_notebook should change the positions of the points in the scatter plot:

scatter.data_source.data['x'] = np.random.rand(10)
scatter.data_source.data['y'] = np.random.rand(10)
push_notebook(handle)

Instead, the notebook crashes (“Runtime disconnected”). This happens with bokeh version 1.3.4. You can find a demo of the problem here.

[blois]

I am working on this on two fronts right now-

• The underlying plumbing to get binary comms working in Colab. I was pulled off onto other tasks but am now returning to this.
• I’ve been discussing with others a generalized API that ideally would be usable by libraries such as Bokeh in more notebook environments. Take a look at https://github.com/Quansight-Labs/jupyter-output-spec. I put together a prototype implementation of this for JupyterLab yesterday, can see it at https://github.com/blois/js-module-renderer. An example test notebook is https://github.com/blois/js-module-renderer/blob/master/tests.ipynb.

Once the binary comms plumbing is in Colab we should be able to either expose some globals in the environment or if the above jupyter-output-spec stabilizes and is acceptable then implement that.

[philippjfr]

I’m working up a PR to add support for those comms to bokeh (and the HoloViz stack). I’ll reopen this issue since the ball is now in our court.