CRviz

CRviz is our first attempt at visualizing networks differently. It's still an early prototype, and it's still under development. That said, we want to share the tool in this formative stage both because we think that our approach has the potential to improve the scalability and legibility of network data, and also because we're actively looking for feedback. So please send us your suggestions and comments!

For more details, please see this blog post.

For a live demo, please check out https://iqtlabs.github.io/CRviz/

Build and run

With Docker

This project includes a Dockerfile for convenient building and deployment.

To build and run, use the following command:

docker build -t crviz .
docker run -dp 80:5000 crviz

Note that if changes are made on the host machine, the build served by the docker container will not be updated. To stop the running deployment and kill the docker server:

docker stop crviz

Without Docker

1. Install or update npm (sudo apt install npm, npm install -g npm)
2. Clone CRViz repo git clone https://github.com/IQTLabs/CRviz.git
3. cd CRViz
4. Run npm install && npm run build

The static files in the ./build directory should be ready for deployment.

To serve the application locally, run npm start. Changes made in your code will be automatically reloaded on http://localhost:5000.

Data Input

This tool supports loading datasets from URLs or by uploading local files. When loading dataset from a URL, ensure that Cross-Origin Resource Sharing is enabled at that URL.

In both cases, the tool expects the data to be in the format described below. For examples, see ./sample_data.

Data format

Name	Type	Required	Description
configuration	ConfigurationObject	no	configuration for this dataset
dataset	array<object>	yes	An array of data points. All data points are expected to have the same schema.

ConfigurationObject

Name	Type	Required	Description
fields	array<AttributeObject>	no	an array of attributes in this dataset.

AttributeObject

Name	Type	Required	Description
path	array<string>	yes	an array describing the path to the attribute in each data point.
displayName	string	no	the name of the attribute, default to joining the path array with .
groupable	boolean	no	whether the attribute can be used as a grouping in the hierarchy. Typically, non-categorical item should not be groupable. Default to true

Preconfigured datasets

Preconfigured datasets (displayed in the dataset dropdown) are defined in src/datasets.json.

This file is expected to contain an array of objects containing the following properties:

Name	Type	Required	Description
name	string	yes	The name of dataset (displayed in the dropdown)
url	string	yes	the URL pointing to the dataset.

After modifying, rebuild as described above for the changes to take effect.

Development

This project is built with ReactJS and Redux (and related libraries) as an application framework. The visualization is built using D3.js.

This project is a bootstrapped using create-react-app.

Here are some quick commands to get started:

• npm install: Install Node dependencies
• npm start: Start the hot reloading development server.
• npm test: Run the test suit and watch for changes.
• npm build: Build a production optimized bundle of the app.

Tools

• React developer tools

Project Structure

• src/domain contains Redux reducers, action creators, selectors, and any other domain specific functions. redux-actions is being used to reduce boilerplate.

• src/epics contains redux-observable

• src/features contains React components organized by features.