Reusing code from different IPython notebooks

I am using IPython and want to run functions from one notebook from another (without cutting and pasting them between different notebooks). Is this possible and reasonably easy to do?

Starting your notebook server with:

ipython notebook --script

will save the notebooks (.ipynb) as Python scripts (.py) as well, and you will be able to import them.

Or have a look at: http://nbviewer.ipython.org/5491090/ that contains 2 notebook, one executing the other.

In IPython 2.0 you can simply %run 'my_shared_code.ipynb' to share code between notebooks. See for example http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/edrex/9044756.

Ipythons %run magic allows you execute python files and ipython scripts in a notebook. I sometimes use the -i option so it runs in the notebooks namespace. Execute a cell with %run? in it for more info.

You can use the ipython --script to save notebooks also as .py files on each save or uncomment the line c.NotebookManager.save_script=True in your ipython_notebook_config.py file for the same effect (use ipython profile create for setting that up - on Ubuntu the config files live in ~/.config/ipython/).

Edit: The following is true, but unnecessary - you can %run a .ipynb file directly. Thanks Eric.

If you use ipython magics in the notebook you want to import, I found that you can rename the .py file to .ipy (an ipython script), but I had to remove the first line (which contained the file encoding declaration) for it to work. There is probably a better way! This approach will likely confuse cell magics too (they'd all get applied at once).