JSNetworkX
JSNetworkX allows you to build, process and analyze graphs in JavaScript. It
can be used together with D3.js in the browser to create interactive graph
visualizations.
It is a port of NetworkX (v1.6), a
popular graph library for Python, to JavaScript. Extensive information can
be found on:
Install
Node.js
Install from npm:
npm install jsnetworkx
Browser
Download jsnetworkx.js and include it in your page with
This will create the global variable jsnx, with which all functions can be
accessed.
Usage
JSNetworkX consists of multiple parts which work closely together:
Graph classes (Graph, DiGraph, MultiGraph and MultiDiGraph) to model
the data
Graph generators for common graphs
Various graph algorithms
Graph visualization (in the browser)
Most classes and functions are available on the root object (jsnx in
browsers, require('jsnetworkx') in Node).
Information about which algorithms are available and the API of the classes,
can be found in the auto-generated API documentation.
Example
// var jsnx = require('jsnetworkx'); // in Node
// a tree of height 4 with fan-out 2
var G = jsnx.balancedTree(2, 4);
// Compute the shortest path between node 2 and 7
var path = jsnx.bidirectionalShortestPath(G, 2, 7);
// [ 2, 0, 1, 3, 7 ]
// or asynchronously
jsnx.genBidirectionalShortestPath(G, 2, 7).then(function(path) {
// path = [ 2, 0, 1, 3, 7 ]
});
More examples can be found on the website.
Asynchronous computation
All the algorithms are implemented in a synchronous fashion (for now at least).
However, many algorithms are also available as asynchronous version. Their
names are gen (see example above) and they return a
Promise.
This is achieved in browsers by creating a WebWorker. The WebWorker has
to be passed the path to the jsnetworkx.js file. You have to set the path
explicitly if the file is not located at the root:
jsnx.workerPath = '/path/to/jsnetworkx.js';
In Node, a subprocess will be spawned (no setup is required).
Caveat: In both cases the input data has to be serialized before it can be
sent to the worker or subprocess. However, not every value can be serialized, in
which case JSNetworkX will use the synchronous version instead. If you
encounter a situation where a value is not serialized, but it should be
serializable, please file an issue.
Iterables
Many methods return generators or Maps. In an ES2015 environment, these can be
easily consumed with a for/of loop or Array.from.
If those are not available to you, JSNetworkX provides two helper methods for
iterating iterables and converting them to arrays: jsnx.forEach and
jsnx.toArray
How to contribute
You can contribute by:
Porting code from Python
Improving the documentation/website
If you plan on converting/porting a specific part, please create an issue
beforehand.
Build JSNetworkX
JSNetworkX is written in ES2015 (ES6) and Babel is used to convert it to
ES5. For the browser, all modules are bundled together with browserify.
To build JSNetworkX, all dependencies have to be installed via
npm install
Build for the browser
npm run build:browser
creates jsnetworkx.js, a minified version for production.
npm run build:browser:dev
npm run watch:browser
Creates jsnetworkx-dev.js, an unminified version with inline source maps for
development. The second version automatically rebuilds the file on change.
Build for Node
npm run build:node
Transforms all modules to ES5 and saves them inside the node/ directory.
npm run build:node:dev
Same as above but with inline source maps. These modules are also used to tun
the unit tests.
npm run watch:node
Incrementally transform modules when files change.
Create and run tests
Tests are stored in the respective __tests__ directories and have to follow
the naming convention -test.js. The tests can be run with
npm test
# or
npm run test:fast # if you also run `npm run watch:node`
This will run all tests by default. To consider only those files whose path
matches a specific string, pass the -g option:
# Runs all digraph tests but no graph tests
npm run test:fast -- -g digraph
The difference between npm test and npm run test:fast is that the former
will always transplile all files from ES6 to ES5 first. This is slow and
annoying during development. Therefore you can use
npm run watch:node
to automatically convert only the changed file and run npm run test:fast to
quickly test them.
Ideally, every module has corresponding unit test. If you port a module from
NetworkX, make sure to implement the same tests.
Run coverage
We use istanbul to generate a coverage report. We are not enforcing any coverage
yet, but there should not be a regression. The report can be created via
npm run cover
and written to coverage/.