On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 10:49:52 +0100, TheDD <pas.d@email.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>i have a question:
>
>is there any librairy for drawing graphs with PHP? Not graphs like
>histogram or alike, but like a set of shapes linked together in a certain
>way (like a flow chart or call graph).
>
>I have found a script to handle the graph in memory but i can already do
>that, my problem is to draw it (it an optimal way, and without crossing
>links if possible).[/color]
The most popular free directed graph drawing library is the 'dot' program from
the Graphviz library:
http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/
It does a decent enough job for small-ish graphs (<50 nodes), can output in
various formats, including HTML image maps so you can make the nodes clickable.
Basically you'll have to output a file in the simple format that dot
understands describing the graph, and use system() or backticks `` to call dot
to render that to a file.
Doesn't guarantee optimal layout or zero crossing edges; it uses heuristics to
get a generally reasonable layout.
There are commercial packages that do a better job but they're mostly
incredibly expensive. The Graph Layout Toolkit from Tom Sawyer Software looked
impressive, but the quote they called back with had quite a few zeroes ;-)
--
Andy Hassall (andy@andyh.co.uk) icq(5747695) (
http://www.andyh.co.uk)
Space: disk usage analysis tool (
http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space)
