Is it possible to modify a mutable variable (cell value) by name? (reflection, introspection, runtime)

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i would like to use notebooks as dashboards that receive data via websocket. so in my local development tool i send data to the notebook like so:

socketserver.send “a” 72

this should then modify the value of the cell named “a” (presumably that must be declared as mutable). I can do this with dispatching the variable names and write specific update statements, but I would like to accomplish this generic. by implanting my generic Websocket code I could then remote control the notebook.

The best example about the required introspection I found is the notebook viewer. That notebook hosts its own the runtime and gets access to the “interior” or reflected view of the notebook. I think I cannot use that approach, as I want to modify variable in the current notebook. And since cell functions are evaluated inside isolated workers I guess I cannot update named cells via reflection.

Or is that possible?

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There’s no generic ability to set the value of another cell, but you can define a cell that represents all the values that the socket can send and react to that, or you can define separate cells that share a socket and update independently.

Here’s an example of the single cell approach to define realtime data:

And here’s an example of cells that update independently by share the same socket:

I’d consider the later primarily for performance reasons, if you want downstream cells to react only to the subset of the realtime data they care about.

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thank you for your help and hints mike.

i see you just wrote the socket sharing nb, thanks, will continue with that approach.