The interact
function (panel.interact
) automatically creates user interface (UI) controls for exploring code and data interactively. It is the easiest way to get started using Panel, and it provides enough flexibility that it may be all you need to learn in Panel.
import panel as pn
from panel.interact import interact, interactive, fixed, interact_manual
from panel import widgets
pn.extension()
interact
¶At the most basic level, interact
autogenerates UI controls for function arguments, and then calls the function with those arguments when you manipulate the controls interactively. To use interact
, you need to define a function that you want to explore. Here is a function that prints its only argument x
.
def f(x):
return x
When you pass this function as the first argument to interact
along with an integer keyword argument (x=10
), a slider is generated and bound to the function parameter.
interact(f, x=10)
When you move the slider, the function is called, which prints the current value of x
.
If you pass True
or False
, interact
will generate a checkbox:
interact(f, x=True)
If you pass a string, interact
will generate a text area.
interact(f, x='Hi there!')
interact
can also be used as a decorator. This allows you to define a function and how to interact with it in a single shot. As this example shows, interact
also works with functions that have multiple arguments.
@interact(x=True, y=1.0)
def g(x, y):
return (x, y)
g
The interact
function returns a Panel containing the widgets and the display output. By indexing into this Panel we can lay out the objects precisely how we want:
layout = interact(f, x=10)
pn.Column('**A custom interact layout**', pn.Row(layout[0], layout[1]))
fixed
¶There are times when you may want to explore a function using interact
, but fix one or more of its arguments to specific values. This can be accomplished by wrapping values with the fixed
function.
def h(p, q):
return (p, q)
When we call interact
, we pass fixed(20)
for q to hold it fixed at a value of 20
.
interact(h, p=5, q=fixed(20))
Notice that a slider is only produced for p
, as the value of q
is fixed.
When you pass an integer-valued keyword argument of 10
(x=10
) to interact
, it generates an integer-valued slider control with a range of [-10,+3*10]
. In this case, 10
is an abbreviation for an actual slider widget:
IntSlider(min=-10,max=30,step=1,value=10)
In fact, we can get the same result if we pass this IntSlider
as the keyword argument for x
:
interact(f, x=widgets.IntSlider(start=-10,end=30,step=1,value=10))
This examples clarifies how interact
proceses its keyword arguments:
Widget
instance with a value
attribute, that widget is used. Any widget with a value
attribute can be used, even custom ones.The following table gives an overview of different widget abbreviations:
Keyword argument | Widget |
True or False | Checkbox |
'Hi there' | Text |
value or (min,max,[step,[value]]) if integers are passed | IntSlider |
value or (min,max,[step,[value]]) if floats are passed | FloatSlider |
['orange','apple'] or {'one':1,'two':2} | Dropdown |
You have seen how the checkbox and textarea widgets work above. Here, more details about the different abbreviations for sliders and dropdowns are given.
If a 2-tuple of integers is passed (min,max)
, an integer-valued slider is produced with those minimum and maximum values (inclusively). In this case, the default step size of 1
is used.
interact(f, x=(0, 4))
If a 3-tuple of integers is passed (min,max,step)
, the step size can also be set.
interact(f, x=(0, 8, 2))
A float-valued slider is produced if the elements of the tuples are floats. Here the minimum is 0.0
, the maximum is 10.0
and step size is 0.1
(the default).
interact(f, x=(0.0, 10.0))
The step size can be changed by passing a third element in the tuple.
interact(f, x=(0.0, 10.0, 0.01))
For both integer and float-valued sliders, you can pick the initial value of the widget by supplying a default keyword argument when you define the underlying Python function. Here we set the initial value of a float slider to 5.5
.
@interact(x=(0.0, 20.0, 0.5))
def h(x=5.5):
return x
h
You can also set the initial value by passing a fourth element in the tuple.
interact(f, x=(0.0, 20.0, 0.5, 5.5))
Use None
as the third element to just set min, max, and value.
interact(f, x=(0.0, 20.0, None, 5.5))
Dropdown menus are constructed by passing a list of strings. In this case, the strings are both used as the names in the dropdown menu UI and passed to the underlying Python function.
interact(f, x=['apples', 'oranges'])
When working with numeric data interact
will automatically add a discrete slider:
interact(f, x=dict([('one', 10), ('two', 20)]))
When interacting with functions which takes a long time to run, realtime feedback can be a burden instead of being helpful.
If you are using slider widgets and you have a function which takes long time to calculate, you can set the keyword argument throttled
to True
in interact
. This will then first run the function after the release of the mouse button.
interact(f, x=(0.0, 20.0, None, 5.5), throttled=True)