Graph This – rendering your graph with Graphviz.

Graph with Graphviz

Triggered by a user question, let me just very briefly highlight a nice and easy graph visualization feature.

Sometimes, you just want to fast see what you are putting in your little example graph. In Neo4j, there is a well hidden gem-the Graphviz Component. To very shortly output a graphviz rendering, look at this test, demonstrating the basic usage (this code is actually taking a traversal instruction to walk the graph, you can easily just use the whole graph):

And gives you the following output in the Graphviz DOT notation: With this piped into a file, say neo4j.dot, you can now do (after installing graphviz and dot on your machine):

dot -Tpng -O neo4j.dot


And get an output file of neo4j.dot.png, pictured below.

Voila, your are done and can see what you just programmed!


Happy hacking!


/peter