Helios Web

Helios Web is a web-based library to visualize dynamic networks in real-time. Helios-web is under active development and aims to provide a simple API and optimized implementation to be integrated into other systems and render and layout large networks. This is the successor to the Networks 3D project and the Networks Web project.

Check out the demo https://filipinascimento.github.io/helios-web/docs/example/

More demos:

| Network | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | ------- | ----- | -------- | ---- | ------- | ---------- | ------------- | | Watts-Strogatz | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Facebook Egos | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Rewired Voronoi | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | US Airports | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Global Airports | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Protein-protein | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Erdos collaboration | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Europe roads | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Wiki Sciences* | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | Wiki Sciences (small) | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | APS Citations* | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D | | COVID Citations* | light | light+2D | dark | dark+2D | dark+blend | dark+blend+2D |

* huge, may need a good CPU/GPU (press space to enable the layout algorithm)

Building

First install packages

npm install

Build

npx snowpack build

Development and testing

To test the environment use npm start or npx snowpack dev. Then go to http://localhost:8080/docs/example/ in your browser (or use the provided hostname and port).

Usage

To use it in your project you can load it as a module in modern browsers via skypack:

Note: MAJOR changes in version 0.5! Check 0.5 API Changes

<script type="module">

import {Helios} from "https://cdn.skypack.dev/helios-web?min";
// Currently not working. please download and follow the build instructions.
// This will be fixed in the next release

// Nodes are dictionaries (any key can be used as node properties)
let nodes = {
  "0": {
    label: "Node 0",
  },
  "1": {
    label: "Node 1",
  },
  "2": {
    label: "Node 2",
  },
}

// Edges are arrays of node ids
let edges = [
  {
    source: "0",
    target: "1",
  },
  {
    source: "1",
    target: "2",
  },
  {
    source: "2",
    target: "0",
  }
];

let helios = new Helios({
		elementID: "netviz", // ID of the element to render the network in
		nodes: nodes, // Dictionary of nodes 
		edges: edges, // Array of edges
		use2D: false, // Choose between 2D or 3D layouts
	});

</script>

You can find a bare-minimal example at https://jsfiddle.net/yatk8jcb/14/ and a more advanced example at https://jsfiddle.net/filsilva/djfomsgw/69/ (Zachary's karate club network).

Helios web is also available as a npm package:

npm install helios-web

then you can use it in your project by importing using the same syntax as above:

import {Helios} from "helios-web";

//...

0.5 API changes

• Added support for selectable edge picking via pickeableEdges
• Zoom functtion now uses the same easing as the camera interpolator (this will be fixed when camera object is implemented)
• now, an DOM element can be used as input for helios (element), elementID can still be used.
• Shaded nodes can be enabled/disabled on demand (shadedNodes())
• Global Opacity, Size and width (for edges) can be changed via: nodesGlobalOpacityScale*, nodesGlobalSizeScale*, nodesGlobalOutlineWidthScale*, edgesGlobalOpacityScale*, and edgesGlobalWidthScale*.
  • can be Scale corresponding to a multiplicative factor, or Base, corresponding to additive factor
• nodeOpacity now sets opacity for individual nodes instead of all nodes (works like nodeColor).