Warning

This documentation is for an old version of IPython. You can find docs for newer versions here.

Configuring the ipython command line application

This section contains information about how to configure the ipython command line application. See the configuration overview for a more general description of the configuration system and configuration file format.

The default configuration file for the ipython command line application is profile_default/ipython_config.py in your IPython directory. By setting the attributes in this file, you can configure the application. To create the default config file, run this command:

$ ipython profile create

Most configuration attributes that this file accepts are associated with classes that are subclasses of Configurable.

Applications themselves are Configurable as well, so we will start with some application-level config.

Application-level configuration

Assuming that your configuration file has the following at the top:

c = get_config()

the following attributes are set application-wide:

terminal IPython-only flags:

c.TerminalIPythonApp.display_banner

A boolean that determined if the banner is printer when ipython is started.

c.TerminalIPythonApp.classic

A boolean that determines if IPython starts in “classic” mode. In this mode, the prompts and everything mimic that of the normal python shell

c.TerminalIPythonApp.nosep

A boolean that determines if there should be no blank lines between prompts.

c.Application.log_level

An integer that sets the detail of the logging level during the startup of ipython. The default is 30 and the possible values are (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50). Higher is quieter and lower is more verbose. This can also be set by the name of the logging level, e.g. INFO=20, WARN=30.

Some options, such as extensions and startup code, can be set for any application that starts an InteractiveShell. These apps are subclasses of InteractiveShellApp. Since subclasses inherit configuration, setting a trait of c.InteractiveShellApp will affect all IPython applications, but if you want terminal IPython and the QtConsole to have different values, you can set them via c.TerminalIPythonApp and c.IPKernelApp respectively.

c.InteractiveShellApp.extensions

A list of strings, each of which is an importable IPython extension. See IPython extensions for more details about extensions.

c.InteractiveShellApp.exec_lines

A list of strings, each of which is Python code that is run in the user’s namespace after IPython start. These lines can contain full IPython syntax with magics, etc.

c.InteractiveShellApp.exec_files

A list of strings, each of which is the full pathname of a .py or .ipy file that will be executed as IPython starts. These files are run in IPython in the user’s namespace. Files with a .py extension need to be pure Python. Files with a .ipy extension can have custom IPython syntax (magics, etc.). These files need to be in the cwd, the ipythondir or be absolute paths.

Classes that can be configured

The following classes can also be configured in the configuration file for ipython:

• InteractiveShell
• PrefilterManager
• AliasManager

To see which attributes of these classes are configurable, please see the source code for these classes, the class docstrings or the sample configuration file IPython.config.default.ipython_config.

Example

For those who want to get a quick start, here is a sample ipython_config.py that sets some of the common configuration attributes:

# sample ipython_config.py
c = get_config()

c.TerminalIPythonApp.display_banner = True
c.InteractiveShellApp.log_level = 20
c.InteractiveShellApp.extensions = [
    'myextension'
]
c.InteractiveShellApp.exec_lines = [
    'import numpy',
    'import scipy'
]
c.InteractiveShellApp.exec_files = [
    'mycode.py',
    'fancy.ipy'
]
c.InteractiveShell.autoindent = True
c.InteractiveShell.colors = 'LightBG'
c.InteractiveShell.confirm_exit = False
c.InteractiveShell.deep_reload = True
c.InteractiveShell.editor = 'nano'
c.InteractiveShell.xmode = 'Context'

c.PromptManager.in_template  = 'In [\#]: '
c.PromptManager.in2_template = '   .\D.: '
c.PromptManager.out_template = 'Out[\#]: '
c.PromptManager.justify = True

c.PrefilterManager.multi_line_specials = True

c.AliasManager.user_aliases = [
 ('la', 'ls -al')
]