Java - Possible to draw a basic force-directed undirected Graph (Vertices, Edges)?

Question

I am trying to create a class in Java that will extend another class called Graph.

The outline of the graph class is as follows:

• Graph constructor
• adjacent(int i, int j)
• addEdge, removeEdge methods
• addVertex, removeVertex methods
• neighbors method
• numOfEdges method
• averageDegree method
• girth method

I want to know if it possible to draw a very very basic force-directed undirected graph in Java using the graph class that I have made. I want my graph to be visually pleasing!

If so, can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

What is your question, exactly? If you ask whether your class contains enough information to allow applying a force-based layout, then obviously, the answer is no: you at least need to represent the position of the nodes ^^ (eg using additional x and y nodal attributes).

Regarding the algorithm itself, are you interested in the process of implementing it yourself, or just in the result: displaying your graph in a nice way? In the former case, you could start by having a look at seminal papers such as ( Fruchterman & Reingold '91 ) or ( Kamada & Kawai '89 ). Both articles explicitly give the proposed algorithm. In the latter case, you could have a look at existing implementations, there're so many of them. Maybe the most convenient for you would be Gephi 's layout-related class, since this open source software ( available on GitHub ) is itself written in Java.

In any case, you can also have a look at the other SO posts related to this topic, such as Kamada & Kawai graph layout algorithm? or Force-directed graphing .