Combine the power of Atom and Jupyterlab — use Atom to run and edit remote files just like Jupyterlab

Jupyterlab is great. One small issue isthat Jupyterlab is not as powerful as Atom in terms of writing code. With two Atom packages, Atom can be configured as Jupyterlab while still keeping the power of Atom.

What Atom can do:

• Teletype: teletype for Atom makes collaborating on code just as easy as it is to code alone, right from your editor. Using Teletype, you can write code together with your students or colleagues by showing the real power of teamwork and interaction.
• Github for Atom: The GitHub package brings Git and GitHub integration right inside your editor! Now you can switch or create branches, stage changes, commit, pull and push, resolve merge conflicts, view and checkout pull requests and more.
• remote-ftp: This Atom package enables browsing remote FTP/FTPS/SFTP just like the built-in Tree View. You can edit remote files just like local ones using this package. This is extremely helpful if you work in the cloud environment such as AWS or Google Cloud, or any other remote servers.
• hydrogen: With hydrogen Atom package, you can run code interactively, inspect data, and plot with all the power of Jupyter kernels inside your favorite text editor — Atom. hydrogen can turn your Atom editor into a Jupyter notebook which makes your coding much easier.
• Others: smart autocompletion, all kinds of packages to increase your coding efficiency.

Combine the power together using hydrogen and remote-ftp

You can consider hydrogen as your Jupyter notebook. With remote-ftp, you can edit remote files (e.g. python script on AWS EC2) just like your local files. How about combining them together? If you ever dream about a free remote editor with the power of Jupyerlab and Atom, hydrogen and remote-ftp can fulfill your dream.

First, you need to follow the instruction of remote-ftp to configure your remote server information by creating a .ftpconfig file. After the configuration, you should be able to connect to your remote server and edit remote files similar as your local files.

Second, you need to configure your Jupyterlab in your remote server following this instruction.

Third, you need to install the hydrogen package. Once that’s done, you need to configure the remote kernel function following this instruction. Basically, you need to copy some information from your Jupyterlab configuration and put them in the gateway setting of hydrogen as follow:

Finally, you need to start your remote Jupterlab server and open a remote file using remote-ftp. Under the remote file tab, you need to open the hydrogen remote kernel as following.

Once that’s done. You can simply write and run your code under remote server just like local. Enjoy!

More tutorials and articles can be found at my blog-Measure Space and my YouTube channel.