PlutoSliderServer.jl

Pluto notebooks can be made interactive, using the @bind macro. However, when you export your notebook to a file, the @bind interactions do not work. This is because @bind requires a running Julia process to work. Every time that you move a slider or click a button, a Julia process needs to calculate the new reactive values.

So how do you get live interactivity on your website? You could run a public Pluto.jl server that runs the notebook, but this has a couple of problems: when someone edits the notebook, all future visitors will see these updates – it will quickly stop working. That’s not what we want! You could start a new Pluto session for every visitor (like binder), but this means that every visitor needs to wait for the notebook to load, since Julia is quite slow.

πŸ‘‰ This is where PlutoSliderServer.jl comes in. It is a web server that runs Pluto notebooks, and it can only calculate changes from @bind updates, code changes are not supported. This, together with some other tricks, means that every visitor gets their own isolated experience, but without the need to start a new Julia process for every visitor.

PlutoSliderServer in practice

PlutoSliderServer.jl is a web server that serves @bind interactivity for one or multiple Pluto notebooks. The typical setup is:

  • You have a GitHub repository with your Pluto notebooks.
  • You rent a Linux server from a provider (like hetzner, digitalocean, gcp, aws, etc.), from your university (SURF Research Cloud in Netherland), or you have a computer that you can leave running. (It is important that this is a isolated environment, without personal data. PlutoSliderServer.jl is not designed to be secure, and you should assume that visitors can execute code on your server.)
  • You set up PlutoSliderServer.jl using our guide, with auto-git watching enabled.

Now, you have a website with your notebooks, and all @bind interactivity will work. When you push changess to the notebooks in your GitHub repository, the website will automatically update.

Try it out

It is easy to try out PlutoSliderServer.jl on your own computer. If you have a notebook file ready, just run:

import PlutoSliderServer
# fill in your own notebook path here!
path_to_notebook = download("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliaPluto/featured/50205f3/src/basic/turtles-art.jl")
PlutoSliderServer.run_notebook(path_to_notebook)

How does it work?

Take a look at the PlutoSliderServer.jl README or documentation for more details.

Who uses PlutoSliderServer.jl?

PlutoSliderServer is used by various groups and universities since 2020.

The Pluto developers use PlutoSliderServer for:

Help and support

If you have any questions, or you want help setting up PlutoSliderServer.jl, please reach out in all the usual Pluto channels! (Julia Discourse, Julia Slack, Julia Zulip, GitHub issues, etc.).