Simple Jupytext Github Action to Update Jupyter .ipynb Notebooks From Markdown

In passing, a simple Github Action that will look for updates to markdown files in a GitHub push or pull request and if it finds any, will run jupytext --sync over them to update any paired files found in markdown metadata (and/or via jupytext config settings?)

Such files might have been modified, for example, by an editor proof reading the markdown materials in a text editor.

If I read the docs right, the --use-source-timestamp will set the notebook timestamp to the same as the modified markdown file(s)?

The modified markdown files themselves are identified using the dorny/paths-filter action. Any updated .ipynb files are then auto-committed to the repo using the stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action action.

name: jupytext-changes

on:
  push

jobs:
  sync-jupytext:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

    # Checkout
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2

    # Test for markdown
    - uses: dorny/paths-filter@v2
      id: filter
      with:
        # Enable listing of files matching each filter.
        # Paths to files will be available in `${FILTER_NAME}_files` output variable.
        # Paths will be escaped and space-delimited.
        # Output is usable as command-line argument list in Linux shell
        list-files: shell

        # In this example changed markdown will be spellchecked using aspell
        # If we specify we are only interested in added or modified files, deleted files are ignored
        filters: |
            notebooks:
                - added|modified: '**.md'
        # Should we also identify deleted md files
        # and then try to identify (and delete) .ipynb docs otherwise paired to them?
        # For example, remove .ipynb file on same path ($FILEPATH is a file with .md suffix)
        # rm ${FILEPATH%.md}.ipynb

    - name: Install Packages if changed files
      if: ${{ steps.filter.outputs.notebooks == 'true' }}
      run: |
        pip install jupytext

    - name: Synch changed files
      if: ${{ steps.filter.outputs.notebooks == 'true' }}
      run: |
        # If a command accepts a list of files,
        # we can pass them directly
        # This will only synch files if the md doc include jupytext metadata
        # and has one or more paired docs defined
        # The timestamp on the synched ipynb file will be set to the
        # same time as the changed markdown file
        jupytext --use-source-timestamp  --sync ${{ steps.filter.outputs.notebooks_files }}

    # Auto commit any updated notebook files
    - uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v4
      with:
        # This would be more useful if the git hash were referenced?
        commit_message: Jupytext synch - modified, paired .md files

Note that the action does not execute the notebook code cells (adding --execute to the jupytext command would fix that, although steps would also need to be taken to ensure that an appropriate code execution environment is available): for the use case I’m looking at, the assumption is that edits to the markdown do not include making changes to code.

Author: Tony Hirst

I'm a Senior Lecturer at The Open University, with an interest in #opendata policy and practice, as well as general web tinkering...

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