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Graph Clustering User Guide

This is a user guide for using Graph Clustering functionalities.

Interface

interface

The interface includes two optional widgets:

  • a list of checkboxes in the top left-hand corner for clustering by type implemented in the GraphClusteringByType.js
  • a drop-down menu that appears when you click on a graph node implemented in the ContextMenuGraphClustering.js

Context Menu for Graph Clustering

Clicking on any node will display, in a context menu, all the possible actions related to the node.

Action title Description Apply to
Hide the descendants Transforms the node into a cluster in which all its descendants are hidden Nodes with children part of an acyclic subgraph
Hide the children Transforms the node into a cluster in which all its children are hidden Nodes with children part of a cyclic subgraph
Show the children/descendants Makes all its children/descendants reappear Nodes with children
Hide the children with the type '...' Creates a new cluster node linked to the clicked node in which all its children with the specified type and their descendant are hidden Nodes whose children have more than one different type

Hide / Show the children

clustering-children

Clicking on a created cluster node removes the node from the graph and makes the children reappear.

Clustering by type

clustering-by-type

The class GraphClusteringByType.js generates a checkbox for each type of node in the graph. Clicking on a checkbox creates a cluster in which all nodes of that type are grouped together.

How does it work?

Node and link clustering works by separating nodes and links into two respective lists:

  • Graph.nodes and Graph._nodes for the nodes
  • Graph.links and Graph._links for the links

The list named without the '_' contains elements that will be displayed by the graph, while the other list contains elements that will be removed.

We propose two types of clustering:

  • neighborhood clustering which hides the descendants or children of a node. To achieve this, a method in class D3GraphCanvas.js generates a 'parent' property for each node, corresponding to a list of the node's parents, and a 'child' property associating the node with a list of its direct children.
  • clustering by type which creates a new cluster containing all nodes of that type.

Note that the links of a node hidden in a cluster with non-hidden nodes are kept dotted.

To enable clustering to work properly, new methods have been added to the class D3GraphCanvas.js. These methods are located in the “Data functions” section of the code and are documented in the class definition file.