Incorporating livebook virtual file system that uses code blocks in markdown as files

[dantheobserver]

say I want to make a simple web server in livebook and want to reference html files or some other file format. Rather than have the code exist on the local file system or just have them as strings in my code, my idea is to have a kino function that will scan and fetch files from the local code blocks with special annotations as files. For example, I have a markdown block that contains the following

~BEGIN
Some text explaining this html's purpose

<%--testdoc.html-->
<div>
  <a href="http://hexdocs.pm">
</div>

~END

And then my elixir code can do

{:ok, file} = Kino.markdownVirtualFile("testdoc.html")

[jonatanklosko]

With Livebook main you can add files to the notebook in the sidebar, they are written into the files/ directory alongside the notebook and managed together. Then you can reference these files with Kino.FS.file_path, available on Kino main.

Alternatively, you put the file contents in a multiline string and, if you think it's more convenient, define a smart cell with variable name and an editor for file contents.

[dantheobserver]

That's awesome, just saw the filesystem. is the files directory prefixed so that if I put all my livebooks in one repo they don't clobber, or is that on the user to restructure?

[jonatanklosko]

We don't prefix for a couple reasons. So if you have multiple notebooks alongside, they will all add files to the files/ directory (though each notebook will known which files is has). If you don't want to mix up files, then it's best to create one directory per notebook to keep things isolated :)