Configure a first cell by default in Jupyter notebooks

Question

TIs there a way to configure a default first cell for a specific python kernel in the Jupyter notebook? I agree that default python imports go against good coding practices.

Answer 1

I came up with this:

1 - Create a startup script that will check for a .jupyternotebookrc file:

# ~/.ipython/profile_default/startup/run_jupyternotebookrc.py

import os
import sys

if 'ipykernel' in sys.modules: # hackish way to check whether it's running a notebook
    path = os.getcwd()
    while path != "/" and ".jupyternotebookrc" not in os.listdir(path):
        path = os.path.abspath(path + "/../")
    full_path = os.path.join(path, ".jupyternotebookrc")
    if os.path.exists(full_path):
        get_ipython().run_cell(open(full_path).read(), store_history=False)

2 - Create a configuration file in your project with the code you'd like to run:

# .jupyternotebookrc in any folder or parent folder of the notebook

%load_ext autoreload
%autoreload 2
%matplotlib inline

import numpy as np

You could commit and share your .jupyternotebookrc with others, but they'll also need the startup script that checks for it.