Installing pydeck¶

There are three steps before using pydeck:

Install the library via pip or conda

Enable pydeck for JupyterLab or Jupyter Notebook

Include an API key from Google Maps or Mapbox (Optional)

Via pip¶

Note: It is best practice to run this command in a virtual environment.

pip install pydeck

Via conda¶

conda install -c conda-forge pydeck

Getting a Mapbox API key¶

By default, pydeck v0.6 onwards provides basemap tiles through Carto.

You can optionally use a Mapbox API key, by registering for Mapbox via this link. You should then create a new public API token. You can learn more about Mapbox tokens via their documentation.

You can also use a Google Maps API key in a similar way. Currently Google Maps is not supported for 3D visualizations.

If you set a MAPBOX_API_KEY or GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY environment variables, pydeck will detect them.

Enabling pydeck for Jupyter¶

Jupyter allows for more complex server/client interactions. You or your system administrator must enable pydeck for use in Jupyter. Binary data transportation, data selection, and updating data over time interactively only work if pydeck is enabled for use in a Jupyter environments.

To enable pydeck for Jupyter Notebook:

jupyter nbextension install --sys-prefix --symlink --overwrite --py pydeck
jupyter nbextension enable --sys-prefix --py pydeck

To enable pydeck for JupyterLab (on Mac/Unix-like systems):

jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager
DECKGL_SEMVER=`python -c "import pydeck; print(pydeck.frontend_semver.DECKGL_SEMVER)"`
jupyter labextension install @deck.gl/jupyter-widget@$DECKGL_SEMVER

pydeck also works in Google Colab. While you can install pydeck in Google Colab via pip, it is not yet enabled for server use.

Installing from source¶

If you want to install the library from its source:

git clone https://github.com/visgl/deck.gl
cd deck.gl/bindings/pydeck
yarn bootstrap
pip install .

Development¶

If you want to install pydeck for development, you may want to use the make commands:

git clone https://github.com/visgl/deck.gl
cd deck.gl/bindings/pydeck
make setup-env
. env/bin/activate
make init
make prepare-jupyter

You can run the local tests to verify that the installation worked via make test.

Note on pre-releases¶

If you are installing a pydeck prerelease and using JupyterLab, you must install an exact version of @deck.gl/jupyter-widget. You can read this version from pydeck itself:

DECKGL_SEMVER=`python -c "import pydeck; print(pydeck.frontend_semver.DECKGL_SEMVER)"`
jupyter labextension install @deck.gl/jupyter-widget@$DECKGL_SEMVER