Embedding JavaScript in a Jupyter notebook#

I recently found out modern browsers include a JavaScript API for creating public/private keys for cryptography.

I used this as an opportunity to figure out how to run JavaScript in a Jupyter notebook cell, using the IPython.display.Javascript mechanism.

This mechanism allows you to execute JavaScript that will be used to render a cell. It includes a copy of jQuery and makes a element variable available corresponding to the cell your code is running in. It also provides a IPython.notebook.kernel.execute() method which can be used to execute Python code from JavaScript.

Here’s what I came up with:

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from IPython.display import Javascript, display
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display(Javascript("""
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function generateKey() {
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  window.crypto.subtle
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    .generateKey(
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      {
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        name: "RSA-OAEP",
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        modulusLength: 4096,
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        publicExponent: new Uint8Array([1, 0, 1]),
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        hash: "SHA-256",
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      },
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      true,
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      ["encrypt", "decrypt"]
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    )
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    .then((keyPair) => {
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      crypto.subtle.exportKey("jwk", keyPair.privateKey).then((v) => {
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        element.find("textarea:first").val(JSON.stringify(v, null, 4));
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        IPython.notebook.kernel.execute(
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          "private_key = " + JSON.stringify(JSON.stringify(v, null, 4))
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        );
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      });
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      crypto.subtle.exportKey("jwk", keyPair.publicKey).then((v) => {
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        element.find("textarea:last").val(JSON.stringify(v, null, 4));
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        IPython.notebook.kernel.execute(
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          "public_key = " + JSON.stringify(JSON.stringify(v, null, 4))
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        );
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      });
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    });
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}
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element.append(`
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<h2>Generate a public/private key in JavaScript</h2>
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<p><button>Generate key</button></p>
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<h3>Private key</h3>
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<textarea style="width: 100%; height: 20em"></textarea>
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<h3>Public key</h3>
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<textarea style="width: 100%; height: 20em"></textarea>
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`);
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element.find("button").click(generateKey);
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"""))

This works! I get a new cell in the document containing the HTML from that backtick string at the end of the JavaScript code. When I click the button it runs my generateKey function which generates a new key, displays it in the two textareas and makes that key available to the Jupyter environment as the public_key and private_key variables. I can then use them in subsequent cells from Python like this:

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import json
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private = json.loads(private_key)
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public = json.loads(public_key)

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Embedding JavaScript in a Jupyter notebook#