Is it possible to go into ipython from code?

There is an ipdb project which embeds iPython into the standard pdb, so you can just do:

import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()

It's installable via the usual pip install ipdb.

ipdb is pretty short, so instead of easy_installing you can also create a file ipdb.py somewhere on your Python path and paste the following into the file:

import sys
from IPython.Debugger import Pdb
from IPython.Shell import IPShell
from IPython import ipapi

shell = IPShell(argv=[''])

def set_trace():
    ip = ipapi.get()
    def_colors = ip.options.colors
    Pdb(def_colors).set_trace(sys._getframe().f_back)

The equivalent of

import pdb; pdb.set_trace()

with IPython is something like:

from IPython.ipapi import make_session; make_session()
from IPython.Debugger import Pdb; Pdb().set_trace()

It's a bit verbose, but good to know if you don't have ipdb installed. The make_session call is required once to set up the color scheme, etc, and set_trace calls can be placed anywhere you need to break.

Normally, when I use ipython, I turn automatic debugging on with the "pdb" command inside it.

I then run my script with the "run myscript.py" command in the directory where my script is located.

If I get an exception, ipython stops the program inside the debugger. Check out the help command for the magic ipython commands (%magic)

From the IPython docs:

import IPython.ipapi
namespace = dict(
    kissa = 15,
    koira = 16)
IPython.ipapi.launch_new_instance(namespace)

will launch an IPython shell programmatically. Obviously the values in the namespace dict are just dummy values - it might make more sense to use locals() in practice.

Note that you have to hard-code this in; it's not going to work the way pdb does. If that's what you want, DoxaLogos' answer is probably more like what you're looking for.

This is pretty simple:

ipython some_script.py --pdb

It needs iPython installing, usually this works: pip install ipython

I use ipython3 instead of ipython, so I know it's a recent version of Python.

This is simple to remember because you just use iPython instead of python, and add --pdb to the end.

To get IPython's REPL using terminal colors, I had to do this:

from IPython import start_ipython

start_ipython()

https://ipython.readthedocs.io/en/stable/api/generated/IPython.html#IPython.start_ipython