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Any ideas about self hosted tools for trying out code snippets?

I could use something like the typical w3schools example site, but self hosted and ideally, with support for a couple of files simultaneously. For example, editing a HTML and CSS files, or web-framework script and the HTML template file.

The use case is, that I upload some examples and my students can experiment with them and see the output without altering the originals.

Is there something like that already available, or does it involve implementing it by yourself?

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  • What sort of programming languages are you interested in? Mar 15, 2018 at 11:48
  • HTML, CSS, and Python/Bottle. It would be good to have for example, some frame for the python code, and another one for the HTML template. When one of them is modified, the output is accordingly updated. Mar 15, 2018 at 11:50
  • yes, that sort of thing is supported by the Fiddle sites Mar 15, 2018 at 12:30

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You don't state which prorammong languages interest you, but there are lots of XXfiddle sites - just Google for JSfiddle, PhpFiddle, SqlFiddle, etc, etc

You can register for free and create an example which each student can then fork.


[Update] I just saw your comment. JsFidddle will handle HTML & CSS (Google for HMTL fiddle for more) and Python fiddle will handle ... errr, Python :-)

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  • Wow! nice... but, is there any documentation on how to get the Python fiddle running and customized? Mar 15, 2018 at 12:16
  • I am nit sure that I understand - just code it and save it (you have to be registered), this will give a URL which you can share and every change (by you or one of your students) makes a new fiddle, with a new URL - do that help? Try it & see Mar 15, 2018 at 12:29
  • Sure. But the nice thing would be, to have it self-hosted, on my own internal servers. You know... those crazy rules about not using 3rd party servers... Etherpad, for example, can be self hosted as well. Mar 15, 2018 at 12:37
  • The search GitHub, SourceForge, etc now that you know that you are looking for a "fiddle". if you find something good, please come back, post it as an answer and accept it, as that will help others in future Mar 15, 2018 at 13:08
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    Well... thank you anyway. It did help a little bit :) Mar 15, 2018 at 13:45
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Cloud9 IDE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud9_IDE would be my choice. It's been acquired by amazon but the codebase is available under GNU GPL.  It covers hundreds of programming languages, including C, C++, PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, JavaScript with Node.js as well.

https://github.com/c9

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  • This does not appear to be self-hosted, as the OP requires. Also "A valid credit card is required for new user registration, and the service cannot be used without one", which might be a problem for students. Mar 16, 2018 at 13:20
  • I added the github repo. Credit card is required for an aws account. But you are not charged. They simply screen bots and scammers. Mar 16, 2018 at 15:30
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    @Mawg actually it can be too... and Lefty, it is actually also possible to get around the credit card thing. Check out this link: cloud9-sdk.readme.io/v0.1/docs/running-the-sdk Mar 16, 2018 at 17:48
  • It looks really good, but the multi-user support feels still a little weak, if not non-existent for local users. Besides that, the only little downside is, that it looks a little too commercial, with Amazon trying continuously to push you to log in into their service. But otherwise, looks quite good... Mar 16, 2018 at 17:51
  • Then, are you going to accept this as the answer? Mar 18, 2018 at 13:53
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Well... after considering and testing (python) Fiddle and Cloud9, I noticed that the are either missing the self-hosting part, or the multi-user part.

I just remembered that good old ipython, together with the jupyter web-interface and the jupyterhub support for multi-user.

They can also be used with other languages than python, graphical libraries, ... and come on... if I coordinate a little bit the port allocation, they can even run their own development servers directly from the Jupyter Notebooks!

Actually, I noticed that tons of other people are using it too, for the same purpose of introductory programming teaching. So, I am going for the combination of those three.

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