Google Colaboratory Notebook with Data from Google Drive

Until recently, I was using individual Python scripts with data files here and there for data analysis in my research works. After understanding the power of having a better documentation of my experiments along with the codes and graphs, I started to use Jupyter Notebooks. However, I still had a limitation. Jupyter Notebook works on my local computer with the data files. Every time I do some analysis, I have to do it locally and upload the results to Google Drive as a backup. Whenever I want to work on it again, I have to download the Jupyter Notebook and the data files which is a big hassle.

Today I realized that Google provides an online tool to run Python Notebooks while the data and the Notebook file is still in the Google Drive. There's no requirement to download my data and Python scripts to local computer each time I want to do some analysis. Here's how we use Google Colaboratory for this purpose.

(1) Create a directory in the Google Drive where I want to create my Colab Notebook. Let's say I've created the directory "Google-Colab-Demo" in the following location.

My Drive > UCD > Asanka's PhD > Experiments > Google-Colab-Demo

(2) Right-click inside the created directory and select Colaboratory from the menu. It will open a new web browser tab with a new Notebook. Give a name to the notebook. I'll set it to plotting.ipynb. 

(3) In the local computer, create a text file with the name data.csv and add the following content. Then upload it into the above directory we created in Google Drive.

1,2

2,4

3,9

4,16

5,25 

6,36

7,49

8,64

9,81

10,100

(4) Add a text cell and provide some details about what we are going to do.

(5) Add a code cell and insert the following code into it. Note that the full path to the data.csv file can be extracted by right-clicking on the data file on the file browser in the left hand size pane and then selecting the menu option Copy path.

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import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np x, y = np.loadtxt("/content/drive/My Drive/UCD/Asanka's PhD/Experiments/Google-Colab-Demo/data.csv", delimiter=',', unpack=True) plt.plot(x,y, label='Loaded from file!') plt.xlabel('x') plt.ylabel('y') plt.title('Interesting Graph\nCheck it out') plt.legend() plt.show()

(6) Now, run the code segment by clicking on the Play icon on the left corner of the code cell. The resulting graph will appear like the following.

Some extra work...

Sometimes, you can have a Jupyter Notebook with data in the local computer which you have copied to Google Drive. Now you want to run the same Jupyter Notebook in Google Colab. In that case, first you need to right-click on the Jupyter Notebook on Google Drive and open it with Collaboratory. If your Google Drive does not appear to be mounted automatically in the File browser pane, follow the stesps given below.

(7) Mounting Google Drive into the Notebook by running following code. It will prompt for an authentication code which should be typed in. In the left hand side corner of the screen, a file browser should be available now with the access to the google drive files in the mounted location.

1 2	from google.colab import drive drive.mount('/content/drive')

(8) If we want to import another Python file in the Google Drive as a Python module within our Notebook, first give the path to the location of the Python file. Then import the Python module as in a normal Python program.

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import sys sys.path.append("/content/drive/path-to-current-directory") import my-module

Now everything should be good to go like a normal Colab Notebook.

Cheers!

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