Note

This documents the development version of PyGraphviz. Documentation for the current release can be found here.

Tutorial

The API is very similar to that of NetworkX. Much of the NetworkX tutorial at https://networkx.org/documentation/latest/tutorial.html is applicable to PyGraphviz. See http://pygraphviz.github.io/documentation/latest/reference/api_notes.html for major differences.

Start-up

Import PyGraphviz with

>>> import pygraphviz as pgv

Graphs

To make an empty pygraphviz graph use the AGraph class:

>>> G = pgv.AGraph()

You can use the strict and directed keywords to control what type of graph you want. The default is to create a strict graph (no parallel edges or self-loops). To create a digraph with possible parallel edges and self-loops use

>>> G = pgv.AGraph(strict=False, directed=True)

You may specify a dot format file to be read on initialization:

>>> G = pgv.AGraph("Petersen.dot")  

Other options for initializing a graph are using a string,

>>> G = pgv.AGraph("graph {1 - 2}")

using a dict of dicts,

>>> d = {"1": {"2": None}, "2": {"1": None, "3": None}, "3": {"2": None}}
>>> A = pgv.AGraph(d)

or using a SWIG pointer to the AGraph datastructure,

>>> h = A.handle
>>> C = pgv.AGraph(h)

Nodes, and edges

Nodes and edges can be added one at a time

>>> G.add_node("a")  # adds node 'a'
>>> G.add_edge("b", "c")  # adds edge 'b'-'c' (and also nodes 'b', 'c')

or from lists or containers.

>>> nodelist = ["f", "g", "h"]
>>> G.add_nodes_from(nodelist)

If the node is not a string an attempt will be made to convert it to a string

>>> G.add_node(1)  # adds node '1'

Attributes

To set the default attributes for graphs, nodes, and edges use the graph_attr, node_attr, and edge_attr dictionaries

>>> G.graph_attr["label"] = "Name of graph"
>>> G.node_attr["shape"] = "circle"
>>> G.edge_attr["color"] = "red"

Graph attributes can be set when initializing the graph

>>> G = pgv.AGraph(ranksep="0.1")

Attributes can be added when adding nodes or edges,

>>> G.add_node(1, color="red")
>>> G.add_edge("b", "c", color="blue")

or through the node or edge attr dictionaries,

>>> n = G.get_node(1)
>>> n.attr["shape"] = "box"
>>> e = G.get_edge("b", "c")
>>> e.attr["color"] = "green"

Layout and Drawing

Pygraphviz provides several methods for layout and drawing of graphs.

To store and print the graph in dot format as a Python string use

>>> s = G.string()

To write to a file use

>>> G.write("file.dot")

To add positions to the nodes with a Graphviz layout algorithm

>>> G.layout()  # default to neato
>>> G.layout(prog="dot")  # use dot

To render the graph to an image

>>> G.draw("file.png")  # write previously positioned graph to PNG file
>>> G.draw("file.ps", prog="circo")  # use circo to position, write PS file