How do I change the autoindent to 2 space in IPython notebook

Question

I find that developing functions in IPython notebook allows me to work quickly. When I'm happy with the results I copy-paste to a file. The autoindent is 4 spaces, but the coding style for indentation at my company is 2 spaces. How do I change the autoindent to 2 spaces?

Answer 1

The official documentation has an example answering this specific question. This worked for me with IPython 4.

Summary: Paste the following into your browser's javascript console

var cell = Jupyter.notebook.get_selected_cell(); var config = cell.config; var patch = {       CodeCell:{         cm_config:{indentUnit:2}       }     } config.update(patch) 

The setting is persisted. You can roll back by exchanging : 2 for : null.

Answer 2

From the official documentation for CodeMirror Code Cells:

1. Open an Ipython Notebook
2. Create a Code Cell e.g. by pressing b
3. Open your browser’s JavaScript console and run the following

snippet:

var cell = Jupyter.notebook.get_selected_cell(); var config = cell.config; var patch = {       CodeCell:{         cm_config:{indentUnit:2}       }     } config.update(patch) 

4. Reload the notebook page in the browser e.g. by pressing F5

This will fix it permanently. I assume this works only on recent versions, not sure though!