Observable notebook to standalone application

Various methods to migrate an Observable notebook to a standalone webpage.

Example notebook

The joyplot notebook is used as an example throughout this repository.

Examine the results of the migration to a standalone application:

• standalone joyplot using the "Bundle" method
• standalone joyplot using the simpler "Default Observable export" method.
• standalone joyplot using the simpler "Request Observable API" method.
• standalone joyplot using the "Rewrite from scratch" method.

Using ObservableHQ runtime

An Observable notebook can be run as a standalone application using the @observable/runtime library, outside of the Observable platform.

The recommended method is to bundle all the modules into a single JavaScript file: "Bundle" method

See it in action by Philippe Rivière on the Spherical contours notebook:

• Original notebook [@observablehq]
• Self-contained project [@github]
• Self-contained app [@now.sh]
• blog post

Two simpler methods are possible. The first one is to download and extract tgz from Observable notebook to use the default index.html file provided in the tgz file: "Default Observable export" method

The second simpler method is to get JavaScript modules from api.observablehq.com at runtime: "Request Observable API" method

Independent of ObservableHQ runtime

A totally different approach to migrate an Observable notebook to a standalone application is to rewrite the code from scratch: "Rewrite from scratch" method

References

• "How-To… Embed an Observable Notebook in your CMS": notebook cells embedded into a Jekyll blog,
• Downloading and Embedding Notebooks: official Observable documentation,
• zzzev/observable-press: An opinionated way to publish Observable (observablehq.com) notebooks: an untested alternative method.

Credits

Project developed for the LIRIS M2i project by Sylvain Lesage with the help of Philippe Rivière, Romain Vuillemot and Mike Bostock.