Manual

Image_GraphViz provides an object oriented wrapper to generate and output dot files.

About Image_GraphViz

Image_GraphViz is a class that provides methods to generate graphviz (dot) files. It also calls graphviz with all necessary parameters and outputs the generated image to the browser, or stores it into a file.

The package supports clusters, nodes, edges and all attributes to either of them. Apart from that, Image_GraphViz is able to store and load its own graph definition files.

While it abstracts the actual generation of dot files, one still needs to know the dot attributed graph language to take full advantage of the package - especially for style and layout adjustments.

A simple graphviz example

The following code shows how to use Image_GraphViz the easiest way possible - generate a simple directed graph and send it as SVG image to the browser.

<?php
require_once 'Image/GraphViz.php';

$gv = new Image_GraphViz();
$gv->addEdge(array('wake up'        => 'visit bathroom'));
$gv->addEdge(array('visit bathroom' => 'make coffee'));
$gv->image();
?>

The example above will display in your browser as follows:

The constructor does not need any parameters, but one may tell it if the graph is directed, an array of attributes and the name of the graph.

To generate content, serveral methods are available: addEdge(), addNode(), and addCluster().

Calling graphviz' dot or neato is being done by Image_GraphViz implicitly when calling image() or fetch(). Both can be used to generate and display/return image data in a large number of image formats, including svg, png, pdf and plain text.