How to convert Jupyter notebooks to python script

Jupyter notebooks are great for experimentation, reporting and sharing. In a project there are often times when you need to transition from this activity to production ready code. The easiest first step is to convert your notebook to a script. In order to do this you will need jupyter and nbconvert packages installed.

From a terminal or command prompt type,

pip install jupyter
pip install nbconvert

Convert a single notebook

To convert a single notebook, just type the following commands in a terminal where the current directory is the location of the file. Jupyter will convert the notebook to a script file with the same name but with file ending .py.

jupyter nbconvert --to script notebook.ipynb

Convert multiple notebooks

To convert multiple notebooks simultaneously only requires the typing of additional filenames.

jupyter nbconvert --to script notebook1.ipynb notebook2.ipynb

You can even use wildcard searches to make things easier. For instance,

jupyter nbconvert --to script notebook*.ipynb
Richard Davey
Richard Davey
Group Leader, Data & Decision Science

My interests include earth science, numerical modelling and problem solving through optimisation.

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