Python Graph Library [closed]

Asked 3/3, 2009 at 14:12 Answered 23/5, 2012 at 21:33

391

I'm writing a python application that will make heavy use of a graph data structure. Nothing horribly complex, but I'm thinking some sort of graph/graph-algorithms library would help me out. I've googled around, but I don't find anything that particularly leaps out at me.

Anyone have any good recommendations?

Shear answered 3/3, 2009 at 14:12 Comment(0)

273

There are two excellent choices:

NetworkX

and

igraph

I like NetworkX, but I read good things about igraph as well. I routinely use NetworkX with graphs with 1 million nodes with no problem (it's about double the overhead of a dict of size V + E)

If you want a feature comparison, see this from the Networkx-discuss list

Feature comparison thread

Cerargyrite answered 3/3, 2009 at 15:33 Comment(8)

In particular, what I like about Networkx.... it's mostly in python, easy to edit and understand the source code, and it feels mostly "pythonic". – Cerargyrite 3/3, 2009 at 15:36

I was wondering, have you used it with a* or similar algorithms? – Matchboard 11/2, 2010 at 18:37

I just evaluated both. networkx is installable via pip, whereas igraph is not. This makes igraph harder to use as dependencies in your setup.py files. – Coast 10/8, 2012 at 7:46

As an update for 2013, I'm going with networkx just b/c it has a github and looks most up to date of all the options in this answer and the others – Upton 20/2, 2013 at 17:16

@GreggLind I am using Networkx but I can see in my profiler that getting edges from large graph consumes a lot of time. Are there any guidelines or some documentation for better performance? It would be really helpful. – Cessation 17/11, 2014 at 8:32

igraph also has a github: github.com/igraph/python-igraph – Burschenschaft 7/5, 2017 at 22:9

igraph can be installed via pip: pip install python-igraph – Burschenschaft 7/5, 2017 at 22:10

I recently used NetworkX for a project, I had lines in a text file that referenced other lines, etc and I need to be able to detect circular references and walk the graph in a 'directed' fashion. NetworkX worked PERFECTLY for this. It was fast and easy to use. It has the "is acyclic graph" function to test if the graph isn't circular. Cheers! – Repeated 9/11, 2017 at 22:19

120

I would like to plug my own graph python library: graph-tool.

It is very fast, since it is implemented in C++ with the Boost Graph Library, and it contains lots of algorithms and extensive documentation.

Unrounded answered 24/11, 2010 at 17:24 Comment(18)

+1 For graph-tool. We've been using it in our lab. It is really fast compared to other python libraries. Besides, drawing and displaying graph is pretty awesome in graph-tool. Takes a lot of time to compile though! – Dawnedawson 14/3, 2013 at 8:44

I think it would better to give readers a link for comparing the performance of those graph libraries: graph-tool.skewed.de/performance – Garnishee 11/3, 2014 at 18:22

https://mcmap.net/q/86741/-python-graph-library-closed Hello, I wanna give graph-tool a try and I find the instruction to install it as in the above link. However I'm a windows user and of course I don't want to switch to Linux just to use this pack. Is it any way to use this library in Windows using pre-built, easy-to-install method? (Of course they offered the method to compile this library by myself but this seems to elaborate too much). – Verdie 16/3, 2014 at 18:29

@Tiago Peixoto: I am keen to try and use the graph-tool library, I have one question, How can I use it with pyQt, basically I am in need of a pyton graph library that allows me to create interactive graphs on a Qt Qgraphicsscene/Qgraphicsview. I noticed that graph-tool can create static graphs, pngs etc using cairo, do you know if its possible to use your library with QgraphicsScene? if so how? Many thanks – Campanulate 3/5, 2014 at 19:49

@Campanulate I'm afraid not. Graph-tool uses GTK+/cairo, and hence cannot be easily integrated with Qt. However it does include a ready-to-use GTK+ widget for drawing interactive graphs. – Unrounded 3/5, 2014 at 20:30

No windows support unfortunately :( – Intend 19/7, 2014 at 12:43

@TiagoPeixoto This looks so so promising but can't use it on windows. I am stuck with NetworkX, finding it too slow. – Cessation 19/11, 2014 at 0:13

So embarrassing that such a well-praised tool has no port for Windows user... I find there are too much hassle to build and install on Windows (not to mention there's very high chance that the build will fail). – Verdie 2/1, 2015 at 19:40

Looks great from the documentation. Why doesn't pip install graph-tool work? – Request 19/11, 2015 at 13:1

@ColonelPanic This is a FAQ, see graph-tool.skewed.de/download: "The short answer is that it can't be done, since graph-tool depends crucially on some (excellent) C++ libraries such as Boost, which are not installable via pip." – Unrounded 20/11, 2015 at 13:4

I would love to use it but the GPL license does not allow me to use it :( – Leblanc 21/1, 2016 at 17:31

@TiagoPeixoto Hi, I would be delighted if you could help out with this post, very much in unknown territories here :( #37945401 – Privileged 21/6, 2016 at 13:1

@EdisonGustavoMuenz of course the GPL license allows you to use it... You can even make modifications and distribute those! – Unrounded 3/7, 2017 at 12:20

@TiagoPeixoto how does it compares against snap.stanford.edu/ringo in terms of speed ? They seem promising for speed and multicore processing – Ibidem 27/7, 2017 at 12:37

@TiagoPeixoto Can we import planar graphs from shapefiles in graph-tool? I couldn't find anything in the documents so I guess no, but I thought it might be worth it asking the developers. – Fianna 1/12, 2017 at 13:20

@DuccioA Appending to this comment is not the proper way to ask such questions. Please use the mailing list instead: graph-tool.skewed.de/mailing – Unrounded 1/12, 2017 at 16:36

Not really available on Windows (unless you want to use Google Colab which is not user friendly), and its primary emphasis is network science rather than graph theory. I would call it mostly a network science library, but the flows additions are nice (they are much more commonly used in operations research/graph theory, than in NetSci), wished min-cost-max-flow algos were implemented. Sometimes the visualizations are lovely, as Cairo can do a prettier job, but sometimes (like in igraph) it's too much effort to try to make nodes not overlap in the case of a large graph. – Solemn 6/1 at 17:13

This is incorrect. As described in the documentation, it's possible to use graph-tool on windows using the WSL: git.skewed.de/count0/graph-tool/-/wikis/… – Unrounded 7/1 at 9:21

Have you looked at python-graph? I haven't used it myself, but the project page looks promising.

Monti answered 3/3, 2009 at 14:17 Comment(0)

Also, you might want to take a look at NetworkX

Pandect answered 3/3, 2009 at 15:21 Comment(0)

Use the Boost Graph Library - Python Bindings.

Kurtz answered 3/3, 2009 at 14:22 Comment(2)

Nice one dehmann, I went for that first (being a C++ programmer by trade and absolutely loving boost), but this scares me: BGL-Python bindings are no longer being maintained <a top of page> – Shear 3/3, 2009 at 14:25

Look at graph-tool instead, it's bgl based and active. – Pillow 8/6, 2011 at 4:58

Take a look at this page on implementing graphs in python.

You could also take a look at pygraphlib on sourceforge.

Orthodoxy answered 3/3, 2009 at 14:16 Comment(0)

I'm having the most luck with pydot. Some of the others are hard to install and configure on different platforms like Win 7.

http://code.google.com/p/pydot/

Ellamaeellan answered 20/1, 2012 at 19:57 Comment(0)

I second zweiterlinde's suggestion to use python-graph. I've used it as the basis of a graph-based research project that I'm working on. The library is well written, stable, and has a good interface. The authors are also quick to respond to inquiries and reports.

Wooley answered 23/5, 2012 at 21:33 Comment(0)

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