Is it possible to start an interactive Python shell inside a Python program?
I want to use such an interactive Python shell (which is running inside my program's execution) to inspect some program-internal variables.
5 Answers
The code module provides an interactive console:
import readline # optional, will allow Up/Down/History in the console
import code
variables = globals().copy()
variables.update(locals())
shell = code.InteractiveConsole(variables)
shell.interact()
9 Comments
kyrill
Note that
vars is a built-in function. Also, in Python 3.5+, you can create a "compound" dictionary from two existing dictionaries using dict expansion: variables = {**globals(), **locals()}.
phihag
@kyrill Fixed the former point. Since there still is a significant number of Python<3.5 users, I'll keep the dictionary compounding as is for now.
Ash
is it possible to wrap or enclose the interactiveconsole within a widget in PyQt5?
Skandix
@phihag:
readline doesen't seems to exist anymore. Is the up/down/history feature still avaiable through some standard library? |
In ipython 0.13+ you need to do this:
from IPython import embed
embed()
1 Comment
raviadhikari418
For a really long time I had been using
import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace(). I have found the ultimate tool embed(). Thanks!I've had this code for a long time, I hope you can put it to use.
To inspect/use variables, just put them into the current namespace. As an example, I can access var1 and var2 from the command line.
var1 = 5
var2 = "Mike"
# Credit to effbot.org/librarybook/code.htm for loading variables into current namespace
def keyboard(banner=None):
import code, sys
# use exception trick to pick up the current frame
try:
raise None
except:
frame = sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame.f_back
# evaluate commands in current namespace
namespace = frame.f_globals.copy()
namespace.update(frame.f_locals)
code.interact(banner=banner, local=namespace)
if __name__ == '__main__':
keyboard()
However if you wanted to strictly debug your application, I'd highly suggest using an IDE or pdb(python debugger).
Comments
Using IPython you just have to call:
from IPython.Shell import IPShellEmbed; IPShellEmbed()()
2 Comments
Ha-Duong Nguyen
In fact, you should use
import IPython; IPython.embed();. See this issue.
Fábio Diniz
Yeah that is what I use today too, 3 years later =)
Another trick (besides the ones already suggested) is opening an interactive shell and importing your (perhaps modified) python script. Upon importing, most of the variables, functions, classes and so on (depending on how the whole thing is prepared) are available, and you could even create objects interactively from command line. So, if you have a test.py file, you could open Idle or other shell, and type import test (if it is in current working directory).
1 Comment
mic_e
A similar approach that would place the script's globals in the global namespace instead of a module namespace:
exec(open("test.py").read())
printfor that.