an IPython magic for capturing data in YAML into a running IPython kernel.

From the command line (or with ! in a notebook cell):

pip install yamlmagic

In the notebook, you can use the %load_ext or %reload_ext line magic.

%reload_ext yamlmagic

In your profile's ipython_kernel_config.py, you can add the following line to automatically load yamlmagic into all your running kernels:

c.InteractiveShellApp.extensions = ['yaml_magic']

The %%yaml cell magic will either act as simple parser:

%%yaml
a_toplevel_key: 1

which can be accessed by the special last result variable _:

_

Or will update a named variable with the parsed document:

%%yaml x
- a: 1
  b: 2

x

By default, yaml.SafeLoader will be used, which won't allow the powerful but dangerous (and unportable) `!python/ tags <http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAMLDocumentation#YAMLtagsandPythontypes>__. If you'd like to use them, provide the -l (or --loader) argument with a BaseLoader` subclass available via a local variable...

from yaml import Loader
class FooLoader(Loader):
    # some special things you have built
    pass

%%yaml --loader FooLoader
!!python/float 0

...or dotted-notation path to a loader:

%%yaml --loader yaml.Loader
!!python/float 0

Issues and pull requests welcome!

yamlmagic is released as free software under the BSD 3-Clause license.

• [@tonyfast](http://robclewley.github.io) for asking for this
• [@robclewley](http://robclewley.github.io) for documentation-shaming a gist into a module