Feature request: import from (own) unpublished version of already published notebook

Feedback
1

Use case:

I’ve created a notebook defining the adot template literal that I offer others to use.

I’m now adding functions to it and want to create tests of it in another notebook, but since I can’t import the unpublished version of the adot notebook, I’m forced to put the tests in the same notebook as the definition.

This clutters the notebook so I wouldn’t like to publish it with the test in it. If I fork a backup copy and then remove them in the “production” notebook, I have to cut-and-paste them back and forth.

Also, in this way I’m not testing that the import itself works.

I would be satisfied to be able to import only from my own unpublished notebooks.

2

From https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock/introduction-to-imports:

You can only import from published notebooks; you can’t import from draft notebooks, even your own. However, we’re planning on supporting “unlisted” publishing in the future, which would allow you to publish a notebook and import from it without it appearing in public feeds or on your profile.

That future is now here, so maybe it’s already possible. But how?

3

@magjac

The future is here! If you “Share” your notebook, you can then import it from another one.

image

Then, in your notebook:

import {cell} from "866e77fcce6e40fa"

… replacing the notebook id with the notebook that you’ve just shared. Cheers!

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4

Thanks. I wasn’t aware of that and it’s very useful, but I would like to import an unpublished version of an already published notebook. Sorry for being a bit unclear. I seem to be getting the published version always.

5

I see. Yes, I’m afraid we don’t provide a way to import (or share) unpublished versions of published notebooks … yet.

When we expand the way you can interact with a notebook’s history, this is the sort of thing that should become possible.

6

Interesting. Won’t this get exported though, kind of defeating the ‘non-publishedness’ on the original code?

7

Apparently not: https://api.observablehq.com/@kelleyvanevert/import-unpublished-secret-stuff.js?key=1f62dcb9e4f5275b — the original says “hello, world”, but the exported code indeed excludes the unpublished notebook, and hence the runtime fails. (“RuntimeError: secret could not be resolved”)

8

@kelleyvanevert — the inability to export notebooks that themselves imported shared (but not yet published) notebooks was an oversight on our part. Now corrected.

If you look at your import-unpublished-secret-stuff.js URL again, you’ll see that it now bundles the shared notebook, as it should.

9

Hmm, OK. But the combination of the following does seem a bit weird to me:

  • If you have an unpublished notebook with some url /d/as9d87fsayufd8d, you will not be able to import with import { v } from 'as9d87fsayufd8d' — which I find reasonable, as you haven’t published it yet, hence it should be private.
  • If you ‘share’ this notebook, it just copies the same link it already has, and ‘under the hood’ sometimes changes, so that now import { v } from 'as9d87fsayufd8d' does work (and, maybe, just imports the last version that you ‘shared’). — I think it would be a bit more logical / semantic if the shared url would be something like /shared/as9d87fsayufd8d (so there’s no implicit ‘under-the-hood’ logic to whether the import is allowed, the info is in the url) or /shared/as9d87fsayufd8d/v/12 (nothing the shared version, which only makes sense if multiple shared versions are possible) or /shared/092u3i99898 (an entirely new ID, to emphasize the static copy of the version at share-time).
  • You might want to import some small piece of secret code, such as an API token. [I think that question sprung up somewhere in the past in this forum.] For that use-case, I think it would be reasonable if you were able to import cells from your own, unpublished, unshared, notebooks?
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