Pixiedust is an open source Python helper library that works as an add-on to Jupyter notebooks to improve the user experience of working with data. It also provides extra capabilities that fill a gap when the notebook is hosted on the cloud and the user has no access to configuration files.
Its current capabilities include:
- packageManager lets you install spark packages inside a python notebook. This is something that you can't do today on hosted Jupyter notebooks, which prevents developers from using a large number of spark package add-ons.
The following code installs the GraphFrames spark package into your IPython notebook
from pixiedust.packageManager import PackageManager pkg=PackageManager() pkg.installPackage("graphframes:graphframes:0")
- **visualizations.** One single API called `display` lets you visualize your spark object in different ways: table, charts, maps, etc.... This module is designed to be extensible, providing an API that lets anyone easily contribute a new visualization plugin.
This sample visualization plugin uses d3 to show the different flight routes for each airport:
- **service integration.** Stash data into a variety of back-end data sources, like Cloudant, dashDB, GraphDB, etc...
_**Note:** Pixiedust currently works only on a Python Notebook hosted on IBM Bluemix._