How to save a Python interactive session

Question

I find myself frequently using Python s interpreter to work with databases  files  etc -- basically a lot of manual formatting of semi-structured data   I don t properly save and clean up the useful bits as often as I would like   Is there a way to save my input into the shell  db connections  variable assignments  little for loops and bits of logic  -- some history of the interactive session   If I use something like script I get too much stdout noise   I don t really need to pickle all the objects -- though if there is a solution that does that  it would be OK   Ideally I would just be left with a script that ran as the one I created interactively  and I could just delete the bits I didn t need   Is there a package that does this  or a DIY approach

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After installing Ipython  and opening an Ipython session by running the command   ipython   from your command line  just run the following Ipython  magic  command to automatically log your entire  Ipython session    logstart   This will create a uniquely named  py file and store your session for later use as an interactive Ipython session or for use in the script s  of your choosing

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I had to struggle to find an answer  I was very new to iPython environment   This will work  If your iPython session looks like this   In  1    import numpy as np      In  135   counter collections Counter mapusercluster 3   In  136   counter Out 136   Counter  2  700  0  351  1  233     You want to save lines from 1 till 135 then on the same ipython session use this command  In  137    save test py 1-135   This will save all your python statements in test py file in your current directory   where you initiated the ipython

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There is a way to do it  Store the file in    pystartup       Add auto-completion and a stored history file of commands to your Python   interactive interpreter  Requires Python 2 0   readline  Autocomplete is   bound to the Esc key by default  you can change it - see readline docs       Store the file in    pystartup  and set an environment variable to point   to it    export PYTHONSTARTUP  home user  pystartup  in bash      Note that PYTHONSTARTUP does  not  expand      so you have to put in the   full path to your home directory   import atexit import os import readline import rlcompleter  historyPath   os path expanduser     pyhistory    def save history historyPath historyPath       import readline     readline write history file historyPath   if os path exists historyPath       readline read history file historyPath   atexit register save history  del os  atexit  readline  rlcompleter  save history  historyPath   and then set the environment variable PYTHONSTARTUP in your shell  e g  in    bashrc    export PYTHONSTARTUP  HOME  pystartup   You can also add this to get autocomplete for free   readline parse and bind  tab  complete     Please note that this will only work on  nix systems  As readline is only available in Unix platform

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To save input and output on XUbuntu    In XWindows  run iPython from the Xfce terminal app  click Terminal in the top menu bar and look for save contents in the dropdown   I find this saves the input and output  going all the way back to when I opened the terminal   This is not ipython specific  and would work with ssh sessions or other tasks run from the terminal window

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There is  history magic for printing and saving the input history  and optionally the output    To store your current session to a file named my history py    gt  gt  gt   hist -f my history py   History IPython stores both the commands you enter  and the results it produces  You can easily go through previous commands with the up- and down-arrow keys  or access your history in more sophisticated ways   You can use the  history magic function to examine past input and output  Input history from previous sessions is saved in a database  and IPython can be configured to save output history   Several other magic functions can use your input history  including  edit   rerun   recall   macro   save and  pastebin  You can use a standard format to refer to lines    pastebin 3 18-20  1 1-5   This will take line 3 and lines 18 to 20 from the current session  and lines 1-5 from the previous session   See  history  for the Docstring and more examples   Also  be sure to explore the capabilities of  store magic for lightweight persistence of variables in IPython      Stores variables  aliases and macros in IPython   s database    d     a   1   b   2   store d    stores the variable del d   store -r d    Refresh the variable from IPython s database   gt  gt  gt  d   a   1   b   2    To autorestore stored variables on startup  specifyc StoreMagic autorestore   True in ipython config py

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In IPython  I first use In  2    hist  to view my past code  I select the chunk I want to save and then paste it into file my file py using the   file magic  short for   writefile  In  3     file my file py           paste code here                       hitting return two times in the end  To append to file use the option -a    file -a my file py  If needed  I can list  edit  etc  the file in the underlying command line using the exclamation mark In  5    ls -l my file py In  6    vi my file py

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I d like to suggest another way to maintain python session through tmux on linux  you run tmux  attach your self to the session you opened  if not attached after opening it directly   execute python and do whatever you are doing on it  then detach from session  detaching from a tmux session does not close the session  the session remains open    pros of this method  you can attach to this session from any other device  in case you can ssh your pc   cons of this method  this method does not relinquish the resources used by the opened python session until you actually exist the python interpreter

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Also  reinteract gives you a notebook-like interface to a Python session

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If you use bpython  all your command history is by default saved to    pythonhist   To save the commands for later reusage you can copy them to a python script file     cp    pythonhist mycommands py   Then edit that file to clean it up and put it under Python path  global or virtual environment s site-packages  current directory  mentioning in   pth  or some other way    To include the commands into your shell  just import them from the saved file    gt  gt  gt  from mycommands import

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there is another option --- pyslice  in the  wxpython 2 8 docs demos and tools   there is a  open source program named  pyslices    you can use it like a editor  and it also support using like a console ---- executing each line like a interactive interpreter with immediate echo   of course  all the blocks of codes and results of each block will be recorded into a txt file automatically    the results are logged just behind the corresponding block of code  very convenient

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Just putting another suggesting in the bowl  Spyder    It has History log and Variable explorer  If you have worked with MatLab  then you ll see the similarities

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The  history command is awesome  but unfortunately it won t let you save things that were  paste  d into the sesh   To do that I think you have to do  logstart at the beginning  although I haven t confirmed this works    What I like to do is   history -o -n -p -f filename txt  which will save the output  line numbers  and       before each input  o  n  and p options    See the docs for  history here

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In addition to IPython  a similar utility bpython has a  save the code you ve entered to a file  feature

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Some comments were asking how to save all of the IPython inputs at once  For  save magic in IPython  you can save all of the commands programmatically as shown below  to avoid the prompt message and also to avoid specifying the input numbers       currentLine   len In -1      save -f my session 1- currentLine  The -f option is used for forcing file replacement and the len IN -1 shows the current input prompt in IPython  allowing you to save the whole session programmatically

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http   www andrewhjon es save-interactive-python-session-history  import readline readline write history file   home ahj history

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IPython is extremely useful if you like using interactive sessions  For example for your use-case there is the  save magic command  you just input  save my useful session 10-20 23 to save input lines 10 to 20 and 23 to my useful session py  to help with this  every line is prefixed by its number    Furthermore  the documentation states      This function uses the same syntax as  history for input ranges  then saves the lines to the filename you specify    This allows for example  to reference older sessions  such as   save current session  0   save previous session  1    Look at the videos on the presentation page to get a quick overview of the features

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As far as Linux goes  one can use script command to record the whole session  It is part of util-linux package so should be on most Linux systems     You can create and alias or function that will call script -c python and that will be saved to a typescript file   For instance  here s a reprint of one such file     cat typescript                                                                                                       Script started on Sat 14 May 2016 08 30 08 AM MDT Python 2 7 6  default  Jun 22 2015  17 58 13    GCC 4 8 2  on linux2 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  print  Hello Pythonic World  Hello Pythonic World  gt  gt  gt    Script done on Sat 14 May 2016 08 30 42 AM MDT   Small disadvantage here is that the script records everything   even line-feeds  whenever you hit backspaces   etc  So you may want to use col to clean up the output  see this post on Unix amp Linux Stackexchange

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If you are using IPython you can save to a file all your previous commands using the magic function  history with the -f parameter  p e    history -f  tmp history py

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You can use built-in function open  I use it in all of my programs in which I need to store some history  Including Calculator  etc   for example   gk-test py or anything else would do try    use the try loop only if you haven t created the history file outside program     username   open  quot history txt quot   readline   strip  quot  n quot       user age   open  quot history txt quot   readlines   1  strip  quot  n quot   except FileNotFoundError      username   input  quot Enter Username   quot       user age   input  quot Enter User s Age   quot       open  quot history txt quot    quot w quot   write f quot  username  n user age  quot    Rest of the code is secret  try it your own   I would thank to all of them who liked my comments  Thank you for reading this

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For those using spacemacs  and ipython that comes with python-layer  save magic creates a lot of unwanted output  because of the constant auto-completion command working in the backround such as     len all suffixes      join   PYTHON EL get completions    len          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all substa      len all substantives w suffixes      join   PYTHON EL get completions    len          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all           join   PYTHON EL get completions    all w          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all wo          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all wor          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all word          join   PYTHON EL get completions    all words      len all words w logograms  len all verbs    To avoid this just save the ipython buffer like you normally save any other  spc f s

[python] How to save a Python interactive session?

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