Access to variables from outside Observable

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1

My question: variables can be imported from one notebook to another (awesome), but is there a way to access a notebook’s variables from outside Observable? I’d like to use a notebook to programmatically assemble some data, and then access that data from elsewhere. Thanks…

2

At the moment, there isn’t a convenient way to load data directly from an Observable notebook. But we’re working on it! A feature for downloading a notebook to run standalone, and/or embedding a notebook on your website — including being able to access the live values of cells — is in the works.

In the meantime, I’d recommend using the DOM.download function in the standard library to export your final, processed data as a JSON file that you can then use anywhere you please.

See: https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock/standard-library and https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock/saving-svg for some DOM.download examples.

1 Like
3

Saving SVG / Mike Bostock | Observable fails on my computer with Firefox:

“Content Security Policy: Les paramètres de la page ont empêché le chargement d’une ressource à blob:null/91cfa61f-27f3-a146-8f3e-348ed4d32958 (« frame-src https://static.observableusercontent.com »).”

(It works on Chrome.)

4

OK, thanks! Looking forward to future developments.

5

@Fil: Thanks for the bug report! I’ve added blob: and data: frame sources to our Content Security Policy — so you should be able to use DOM.download from Firefox without problems now.

Let us know if you run into anything else!

6

@eloyer,

We’ve launched embeddable notebooks this morning, which means that you can now programmatically access a notebook’s variables from anywhere you’d like.

The full details are available in that link, but in short:

Runtime.load(notebook, (variable) => {
  if (variable.name === "data") {
    return {
      fulfilled: (value) => myApp.setData(value)
    };
  }
});

Enjoy!

7

Excellent, thanks for the update—can’t wait to try it out!