sigmajs: Interface to 'Sigma.js' Graph Visualization Library

title: 'sigmajs: An R htmlwidget interface to the sigma.js visualization library' authors: - affiliation: 1 name: Jean-Philippe Coene orcid: 0000-0002-6637-4107 date: 2018-06-27 tags: - network analysis - visualisation bibliography: paper.bib affiliations: - index: 1 name: Department of Public Engagement at the World Economic Forum

Summary

With the rise in popularity of networks, it is important for R users to have access to a package that allows visualising the aforementioned networks in a highly configurable, interactive and dynamic manner. sigmajs is a fully-fledged wrapper for the sigma.js JavaScript library.

The sigma.js JavaScript library is described as follows on its website:

Sigma is a JavaScript library dedicated to graph drawing. It makes easy to publish networks on Web pages, and allows developers to integrate network exploration in rich Web applications.

The package sigmajs [@sigmajs] bridges the sigma.js JavaScript library and R [@R2018] via the htmlwidgets package [@htmlwidgets]. The package also extends the original JavaScript library (sigma.js) by providing additional functions, namely using the igraph package [@igraph] to enable the user to layout and cluster graphs. Finally sigmajs is also integrated with the crosstalk package [@crosstalk] which lets graphs be wired to other htmlwidgets such as plotly [@plotly] and leafelt [@leaflet].

Functionality

Graphs are initialised with sigmajs(), all other functions start with sg_, and its Shiny [@shiny] proxies end with _p. Functions can be piped, referring to the magrittr package [@magrittr] pipe operator (%>%), to build the desired graph.

Shiny proxies.
Crosstalk integration.
Buttons to trigger various animations and events.
Possibility to capture graph interactions in Shiny.

The R package sigmajs is available on GitHub or Bitbucket, issues can be opened on Github only. All functions are documented in the package (.Rd files) as well as online with the R package pkgdown [@pkgdown].