How to render a viewer in a Jupyter notebook¶

How-to. Target: a live globe inside a notebook cell, with buttons to control the clock and receive click events.

The widget runs CesiumJS in the notebook from the CDN — notebooks have no local server — and mirrors the runtime control API of show(). There is no HTTP server to start or stop.

Prefer a plain browser window?

The same control API works over show()'s local server — see How to control a live viewer.

pip install "cesiumkit[widget]"

import cesiumkit

viewer = cesiumkit.Viewer()
viewer.add_entity(
    cesiumkit.Entity(
        name="NYC",
        position=cesiumkit.Cartesian3.from_degrees(-74.006, 40.7128, 400),
    )
)

widget = viewer.to_widget()
widget  # display this cell to render the globe

3. Drive the clock and read it back¶

widget.set_time("2026-07-14T18:00:00Z")
widget.set_multiplier(60)  # seconds of simulation per real second
widget.animate(True)

current = widget.get_current_time()  # reads the live clock from the browser

4. React to clicks and save screenshots¶

widget.on_click(lambda entity_id: print("clicked", entity_id))
widget.screenshot("globe.png")

API reference¶

widget ¶

Jupyter widget integration (anywidget).

CesiumKitWidget renders a Viewer inside a notebook with a live bidirectional command channel: Python sends commands (clock, selection, screenshot) over the comm, the widget's JavaScript evaluates them against window.viewer and sends results/click events back.

Requires the [widget] extra (anywidget). Import lazily:

from cesiumkit.widget import CesiumKitWidget
widget = viewer.to_widget()

Classes:

Name	Description
`CesiumKitWidget`	A Jupyter widget rendering a cesiumkit Viewer with live control.

CesiumKitWidget ¶

CesiumKitWidget(
    viewer: Any, *, height: str = "600px", cesium_version: str | None = None
)

Bases: AnyWidget

A Jupyter widget rendering a cesiumkit Viewer with live control.

Methods:

Name	Description
`set_time`	Set the clock to an ISO-8601 time.
`set_multiplier`	Set the clock multiplier (simulation speed).
`animate`	Start or stop the clock animation.
`get_current_time`	Return the current clock time as ISO-8601.
`on_click`	Register a callback invoked with the clicked entity id (or None).
`screenshot`	Save a PNG screenshot of the live canvas.
`close`	Close the widget and fail any commands still awaiting a browser reply.

set_time ¶

set_time(iso: str) -> None

Set the clock to an ISO-8601 time.

set_multiplier ¶

set_multiplier(multiplier: float) -> None

Set the clock multiplier (simulation speed).

animate ¶

animate(on: bool) -> None

Start or stop the clock animation.

get_current_time ¶

get_current_time(timeout: float = 10.0) -> str

Return the current clock time as ISO-8601.

on_click ¶

on_click(callback: Callable[[Any], None]) -> None

Register a callback invoked with the clicked entity id (or None).

screenshot ¶

screenshot(path: str) -> None

Save a PNG screenshot of the live canvas.

close ¶

close() -> None

Close the widget and fail any commands still awaiting a browser reply.