Use widgets (interactive view controls) on top of collection display

[jukent]

Add widgets on top of each column of collection so the user can search on the fly for data. For example in the variable column, there will be a drop-down menu with all the unique variables. And so on for all relevant collection columns.

Eventually, we add a To-Xarray button, so that the user does not have to interact with the pandas search method.

[andersy005]

Examples:

• https://blog.ouseful.info/2016/12/29/simple-view-controls-for-pandas-dataframes-using-ipython-widgets/
• intake-gui: https://intake.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gui.html

[martindurant]

Note that Intake itself makes use of the holoviz Panel widget set, so that you can build interfaces/apps in the notebook or standalone. You may with to follow that lead.

[andersy005]

Thank you for chiming in, @martindurant! I had forgotten about the intake.gui interface. We'll definitely look into intake's approach with holoviz Panel widget set.

[martindurant]

The sub-projects dfviz and xrviz will also be incorporated into the main Intake GUI before the end of the summer, and might be nice visualisation add-ons for you too.