Binder link doesn't redirect to notebook file

[albertomercurio]

Bug description

I followed the simple guide to implement Binder in quarto. I have successfully set the binder container and everything seems to work.

When I click the "Launch Binder" button, it correctly open Binder, but it doesn't open the related notebook. Moreover, if I open I manually, by navigating the folders, I cannot run python, as it requires the Jupyter extension for VSCode.

Steps to reproduce

My _quarto.yml file:

project:
  type: book
  output-dir: _output

book:
  title: "Numerical Methods for Quantum Optics and Open Quantum Systems"
  author:
    - name: Alberto Mercurio
    - name: Daniele De Bernardis
  chapters:
    - index.qmd
    - introduction.qmd

# default format for all files
format:
  html:
    theme:
      light: flatly
      dark: darkly
    highlight-style: atom-one
    css: styles.css
    toc: true
    published-title: Last Update
    date-format: iso
    code-line-numbers: true
    colorlinks: true
    footnotes-hover: true
    fig-align: center
    fig-responsive: true

jupyter: python3

execute:
  eval: true
  cache: true
  freeze: false

My introduction.qmd file:

---
code-links: binder
---

# Introduction

Some text...

```{python}
import numpy as np

# Vectorized array operations
x = np.linspace(0, 10, 20)
y = np.sin(x) + 0.5 * x**2
print(y[:5])  # show first five results
```

Actual behavior

No response

Expected behavior

No response

Your environment

No response

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.7.23
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /Users/alberto/Library/Caches/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.6.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.85.1: OK
      Deno version 1.46.3: OK
      Typst version 0.13.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.7.23
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /Library/TeX/texbin
      Version: 2025

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome found on system
      Path: /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
      Source: MacOS known location

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.10.16 (Conda)
      Path: /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/miniconda/base/envs/computational-quantum-optics-lectures/bin/python
      Jupyter: 5.7.2
      Kernels: julia-1.11, julia-1.10, python3

[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK

[✓] Checking R installation...........(None)

      Unable to locate an installed version of R.
      Install R from https://cloud.r-project.org/

[mcanouil]

Could you use the latest stable release? If you intend to use pre-releases, please update regularly.

This being said, your example is not small or reproducible as it's missing many components which might actually be unnecessary.
We do really mean "steps to reproduce" without there is almost no way for us to help you without spending a lot of time on wild guess.
So remove every YAML options not related to the issue, such as the PDF format, the theming, etc. Doing so, you might even figure out the issue yourself.
Could you share a small self-contained "working" (reproducible) example to work with, i.e., a complete Quarto document or a Git repository? The goal is to make it as easy as possible for us to recreate your problem so that we can fix it: please help us help you! Thanks.

---

You can share a self-contained "working" (reproducible) Quarto document using the following syntax, i.e., using more backticks than you have in your document (usually four ````).
See https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#small-is-beautiful-aim-for-a-single-document-with-10-lines.

If you have multiple files (and if it is absolutely required to have multiple files), please share as a Git repository.

R	Python
````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: knitr --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{r} x <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) y <- c(1, 4, 9, 16, 25) plot(x, y) ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````	````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: jupyter --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{python} import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] y = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] plt.plot(x, y) plt.show() ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````

Additionally and if not already given, please share the output of quarto check within a code block (i.e., using three backticks ```txt), see https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#check.

[albertomercurio]

You can see the MWE in this repo. I removed the unnecessary yaml entries as well as all other files.

[albertomercurio]

I have also updated the codes in the first comment, showing the minimal working example

[albertomercurio]

I was looking at the link of the Binder button, it is a very generic link to the binder container

https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/albertomercurio/quarto-test/HEAD?urlpath=vscode

rather than a more specific one like

https://hub.2i2c.mybinder.org/user/albertomercurio-quarto-test-77tpo458/lab/workspaces/auto-M/tree/introduction.qmd

[mcanouil]

Thanks.

[mcanouil]

Looking at the codebase, that's not a bug but something to be done:

• quarto-cli/src/format/html/format-html-bootstrap.ts

  Lines 724 to 732 in e426fbc

  	const containerUrl = binderUrl(
  	env.github.organization,
  	env.github.repository,
  	{
  	// TODO: figure out open file path (if support in vscode/rstudio)
  	// openFile: extname(source) === ".ipynb" ? source : undefined
  	editor: env.codeEnvironment,
  	},
  	);

Note that the TypeScript function itself supports opening file:

• quarto-cli/src/core/container.ts

  Lines 47 to 64 in e426fbc

  	export interface BinderOptions {
  	openFile?: string;
  	editor?: "vscode" | "rstudio" | "jupyterlab";
  	}
  	export function binderUrl(
  	organization: string,
  	repository: string,
  	binderOptions?: BinderOptions,
  	) {
  	// https://github.com/Notebooks-Now/submission-quarto-lite
  	// https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/Notebooks-Now/submission-quarto-lite/HEAD?labpath=article.ipynb
  	const url = [`https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/${organization}/${repository}/HEAD`];
  	const params = [];
  	if (binderOptions && binderOptions.openFile) {
  	params.push(`labpath=${binderOptions.openFile}`);
  	}