ngraph.asyncforce

Force based graph layout with web workers. This module provides async layout only. You will need to use it in combination with a renderer to get something on the screen.

usage

Layout can be computer in interactive and offline model.

In interactive mode you request the layout to perform n iterations per cycle. This is most suitable for the use cases when you ask layout to compute positions from requestAnimationFrame() callback. This will allow you to save CPU cycles when users are not watching at the page and make a device battery life longer.

// assume graph is an instance of ngraph.graph
// e.g.  var graph = require('ngraph.generators').grid(10, 10);
var createLayout = require('ngraph.asyncforce');
 
var layout = createLayout(graph);
 
function render() {
  requestAnimationFrame(render);
  // ... other stuff
  layout.step();
}

You can access positions of each node by calling a synchronous method:

var pos = layout.getNodePosition(nodeId);
assert(typeof pos.x === 'number' && typeof pos.y === 'number');

The getNodePosition() method will return last known position for the given node id. You can use this value to provide interactive graph rendering.

In offline mode you don't care as much about battery life. All you need is compute N iterations of the layout without blocking the main thread.

var iterationsToCompute = 150;
var layout = createLayout(graph, {
  async: {
    // tell layout that we want to compute all at once:
    maxIterations: iterationsToCompute,
    stepsPerCycle: iterationsToCompute,
 
    // Run it till the end:
    waitForStep: false
  }
});
 
layout.on('cycle', function() {
  graph.forEachNode(printPosition);
});
 
function printPosition(node) {
  console.log(node.id, layout.getNodePosition(node.id));
}

demo

See demo folder for examples in combination with various renderers.

I'm not using this module very often, and your suggestions for the API design are very welcome!

license

MIT