Using the IDE

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This page applies to Dash Enterprise 5. If your organization uses Dash Enterprise 4, view the Workspaces docs at https://<your-dash-enterprise-server>/Docs/workspaces.

When you open a workspace, you’re brought to the IDE. It is a VS Code-like editor and works similarly, though there are some functionality differences. (See the Warnings & Limitations page).

Working with Files in Workspaces

If you launched a workspace based on a previous commit for your deployed app, your app’s files load in the explorer panel on the left of the screen.

Explorer - view your files

Select the pages icon to hide or show the explorer panel.

If you created a blank workspace, the explorer panel is empty and it is where you can start adding files and folders.

Creating Files and Directories

You can create new files and directories in your project from the File menu, or by right-clicking in the explorer panel and selecting New File or New Folder.

Uploading to the Workspace

Drag files to the explorer panel to upload them to your workspace:

Explorer - drag and drop upload

Alternatively, you can right-click in the explorer panel and select Upload Files:

Explorer - upload via menu

Cloning from an External Git Repo

You can also clone an external Git repository. See Cloning Repositories into a Workspace for more information.

Working with the Terminal

In a workspace’s terminal, you can run commands available on Linux. These include pip and apt-get.

To start a new terminal, select Terminal > New Terminal.

New terminal

Running and Previewing Your App

When you make a change to your app in a workspace and run it, we call this app the development app.

Start the development app from the workspace terminal with python app.py.

If you encounter an error like OSError: [Errno 98] Address already in use when starting the app, check that you don’t already have the app running in another terminal in the workspace. You might also encounter this error if you previously ran the app and then closed your browser, as the app process may still be running in the background. See Warnings & Limitations for details on how to resolve this.

While the development app is running, there are two ways to view it:

Workspace preview tab

With both methods, you’ll see the preview update as you work on your code. The workspace shares your app’s production databases, so you can also update data and preview those changes without needing to redeploy your app. (Be careful not to overwrite data in production when you don’t intend to. See Services with Workspaces for examples on how to structure your code to avoid overwriting data.)

Remember to stop the development app when you are done previewing. Closing the workspace does not stop the development app.