Unhelpful error when passing invalid argument to gridplot

I often find myself assembling a list of plots and then writing:

$ show(gridplot(plots, n_cols=4))

This will give the following error:

TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-25-656b46f60be9> in <module>()
----> 1 show(gridplot(plots, n_cols=4, toolbar_location=None))

~/Dev/bokeh/bokeh/bokeh/layouts.py in gridplot(*args, **kwargs)
    320         row_tools = []
    321         row_children = []
--> 322         for item in row:
    323             if merge_tools:
    324                 if item is not None:

TypeError: 'Figure' object is not iterable

The problem is that I wrote n_cols instead of ncols. At this point I’ve done this dozens and dozens of times. Every time I come back to bokeh after a gap, this always trips me up and I forget the ncols/n_cols thing and think there’s some more fundamental mistake.

Can we validate the input to gridplot better?

One of my favorite features about bokeh is the helpful suggestions when you mess up a parameter. I know this is completely different, and nothing to do with the property machinery, but none-the-less a similar experience would be awesome.

[02akshay]

Try this gridplot([p1,p2],[])

[bryevdv]

@02akshay You will have elaborate, without context it’s not obvious what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that snippet works? doesn’t work? does something unexpected?