Kernel communication, variables workspace view

Dear all,
you may know the workspace window from Matlab, or the variables debug view in PyDev, which give a quick overview of all available kernel variables. I’d like to implement something similar for jupyterlab and wonder how to communicate with the kernel to receive the required variables details.

I understand that I’ll use 0MQ to access the (ipython) kernel, but I find no usage of 0MQ in any of the jupyterlab packages, I may be blind though.

Are there any extensions, examples, part of the jupyterlab codebase, that demonstrate how I’d exchange any simple messages with the kernel?

Thank you
Ernst

To answer myself, https://github.com/lckr/jupyterlab-variableInspector appears to include all the steps required.