Using the command line

You can produce a wide range of Bokeh outputs programmatically with functions such as output_file() and output_notebook().

However, this isn’t the only way to work with the library. The bokeh command line tool often offers better flexibility and makes iteration easier and faster.

For example:

bokeh html

Create standalone HTML documents from any kind of Bokeh application source such as Python scripts, app directories, or JSON files.

bokeh json

Generate a serialized JSON representation of a Bokeh document from any kind of Bokeh application source.

bokeh serve

Publish Bokeh documents as interactive web applications.

An advantage of using the bokeh command on a command line is that the code you write does not have to specify any particular output method or format. You can write just the visualization code and decide how to output the results later. This simplifies the above example as follows:

from bokeh.plotting import figure, curdoc

p = figure()
p.line(x=[1, 2, 3], y=[4,6,2])
curdoc().add_root(p)

You can now run bokeh html foo.py to generate a standalone HTML file or bokeh serve foo.py to start serving this document as a web application.

See bokeh.command in the reference guide for more information.

Embedding Bokeh content Extending Bokeh