API Visualization Definition Commands

For background information about the commands described on this page, refer to the information about visualization definitions in the corresponding section of the online documentation.

On this page, API commands of the visual category are described. This category covers all commands to work with visualization definitions. The commands of this category are enclosed by keyword "visual(...)". Click here to get an overview of all API commands.

visual(new_rules(visual_rules))

Removes all current visualization rules and inserts the new rules in parameter "visual_rules". A rule defines the common attributes for all nodes or edges which have the specified type. Nodes and edges may still have individual attributes. The source for the concrete attribute value used for the visualization is determined by the attribute evaluation order. By using this command, the graph visualization will be updated immediately with respect to the attributes in the new set of rules. This way you can handle (and especially exchange) the attributes of a large set of nodes and edges very easily. By using an empty type (i.e. ""), you can supply and overwrite the default attributes that are used by uDraw(Graph) for nodes and edges where a particular attribute is not set. The parameter "visual_rules" is a list of rules with two different kinds of elements that can be mixed in any order:

nr(type,attributes)
Binding between a node type (i.e. arbitrary string) and a list of node attributes used for all nodes of that particular type.
er(type,attributes)
Binding between an edge type (i.e. arbitrary string) and a list of edge attributes used for all edges of that particular type.

visual(add_rules(visual_rules))

Same as visual(new_rules(...)), but here the new rules are simply added rather than removing the old rules. This way you can exchange particular rules that have been set before. The graph visualization will be updated immediately with respect to the attributes in the new set of rules.