Direct linking to graphs

[almereyda]

Coming from erabug/wikigraph#2 and fedwiki/wiki#63 we know that linking to certain states of the graph would be interesting.

Similar to what CoGraph allows, but by using URL fragments known from @fedwiki lineups.

If I searched for Space and Time, they'd automatically be added to the URL and therefore create a stable view onto the data. Those nodes should be expanded by default on load.

[controversial]

I'll look into it, and report back if I implement it. Data would need to be stored about each expanded node, which I don't think it would be reasonable to store in the URL, especially since which articles are linked is something liable to change in a wiki.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:06 PM jon r notifications@github.com wrote:

Coming from erabug/wikigraph#2
erabug/wikigraph#2 and fedwiki/wiki#63
fedwiki/wiki#63 we know that linking to
certain states of the graph would be interesting.

Similar to what CoGraph https://github.com/willzeng/cograph allows, but
by using URL fragments known from @fedwiki https://github.com/fedwiki
lineups.

If I searched for Space and Time, they'd automatically be added to
the URL and therefore create a stable view onto the data. Those nodes
should be expanded by default on load.

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#18

[controversial]

I've been thinking more about how to do this. I don't want to store data for people's networks on my server, because I have very limited storage. The implementation I'm thinking about now is:

1. Implement a method to save data as JSON, and a method for loading that JSON back in. This should be as simple as storing nodes and edges by converting vis.DataSets as JSON
2. Use a service like Dropbox to get a small amount of free storage, and store JSON files there.
3. Use a URL shortener to get a short link to the file stored in Dropbox.
4. Get the ending to the shortened URL, and use it as a form parameter in the URL. Wikipedia Map would look up this text with the URL shortener to get the path to the JSON.

So an example shared URL would look like
http://luke.deentaylor.com/wikipedia/?graph=QtQET. Wikipedia would then look to http://bit.ly/QtQET for the JSON file, assuming that link pointed to a Dropbox file.

What do you think?

(Sorry I accidentally pressed "close" before, didn't mean to)

[almereyda]

I thought just delivering attached data via the URL would be enough? Why caching a graph on the client side if it can be regenerated at any time? The server could then do optimisations in keeping responses available.

Else I believe @remotestorage or @scripting's nodestorage.io could be simple JSON storage options? Or even GitHub Gists.

[controversial]

I've since given this a little more thought. I think I'll store nodes and edges as files on my server with random names, somewhere like luke.deentaylor.com/wikipedia/graphs/Igy5Kj. That's where JavaScript will look to find the JSON.

The reason that the network can't be automatically generated is that:

1. This would only ever be possible for edges, nodes is constructed in part through user actions.
2. Regenerating edges would involve visiting every wikipedia page for which an expanded node exists on the graph. That would take a while, the graph could take several minutes to fully reconstruct for very large networks, and would probably still take ~10 seconds on smallish networks.

The reason the data can't be passed in the URL is that large networks can have many hundreds of nodes. Not practical to pass that through a URL, unless I misunderstand what you're saying.

[almereyda]

It sounds reasonable to me to cache parts of the Wikipedia link graph locally. But will I be able to request wikipedia-map/Spacetime/Complexity, for example?

[controversial]

What would your intended behavior be for that? Would it be adding two
nodes, "spacetime" and "complexity"? Wikipedia Map doesn't have
functionality for connecting those together automatically, if that's what
you're thinking.

On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 5:14 PM jon r notifications@github.com wrote:

It sounds reasonable to me to cache parts of the Wikipedia link graph
locally. But will I be able to request wikipedia-map/Spacetime/Complexity,
for example?

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#18 (comment)

[controversial]

In case you hadn't noticed, I implemented this whole thing more than a month ago, I just haven't implemented a UI. I'm working on an interface now. This will replace the twitter button.