How to make variables visible in sidebar in VS Code on Windows

Question

Forgive me if this had already been asked.

While watching some tutorials in which the person used Visual Studio Code, I saw someone had added to the sidebar an area that displayed the variables they had written that was in the same style as how the different files are shown in the Explorer sidebar.

How do I make that visible on my sidebar?

If I was mistaken that that was something that could be added to the sidebar and it was something else entirely, please let me know. However, if there is a way to bring up a list of variables declared as reference, it'd be very helpful to know about.

Answer 1

Click this link to jump to the VS Code Docs on: Setting up Jupyter Extension in VS Code & Integrated Terminal Environment

I stumbled upon this post, which might be useful for those interested in a convenient way to monitor variables in Jupyter notebooks. I found this webpage in VS Code Docs, that provides numerous screenshots and detailed descriptions on getting a pane to see the variables, especially if my explanation doesn't make sense.

However, here's what I did using, the Python and Jupyter extensions.

1. Hit Control+Shift+P and select "Create: New Jupyter Notebook."
2. On the top right side of script, I left the default kernel as the Python kernel.
3. Paste code into the notebook code block that has some variables in it, click "Run All" top center of the interface.

The code will run without the terminal, outputs below each code block like normal Jupyter Notebooks. But you do want that terminal below to be open. By default, the terminal below is hidden, but you can make it visible by

4. press Control + ` or View - Terminal.

On the Terminal below you will see, next to the Problems, Debug Console, Terminal, a new tab called Jupyter. which will give you that list of the variables defined in your running kernel.

5. Rerun it with the terminal open by hitting, Run All, again

This tab provides comprehensive information such as the variable name, type, size, and value. A particularly handy feature is that if a variable is a dataframe, you'll see an expandable icon on the left side of its name, allowing you to explore the contents of the dataframe.

All this might be useful to those who like Jupyter and/or don't want to always have to comment and uncomment print statements.

Just guessing how the person did this, maybe to make this appear like a sidebar.

6. right click on Jupyter tab in the terminal below, change panel position from bottom to right.

Jupyter notebook, on left panel with code blocks and outputs of each like normal. On the right panel is the 'sidebar' with all the variables and their values, also be able to expand out dataframes and whatnot.

image of how it looks as a 'sidebar'.

image after clicking the icon next to random_csv dataframe, and it expanding to new window