How can you visualize graphs with string-labeled edges?

With the biograph function you can generate a graph object, which you can then visualize with the view function. But it seems this method can only handle graphs with edges labeled with numbers (weigths), not chars or strings. Is there any way I can easily view such a graph with Matlab?

Answer 1

[Abhishek]

Hello Paolo,

Since the ‘biograph’ class was removed from the Bioinformatics Toolbox in release R2022b, to visualize graphs with edges labelled using characters or strings in MATLAB, you can use the ‘graph’ or ‘digraph’ classes. These classes allow you to add custom attributes to nodes and edges, which can include string labels.

Here is the step-by-step implementation of solving the problem using the ‘digraph’ class. I have tried it in MATLAB R2024b.

1. Create a Directed Graph: First thing first, you need to define the source(s) and the target(t) nodes for you directed graph:

        s = [1 1 2 2 3]; 
        t = [2 4 3 4 4]; 
        G = digraph(s, t); 

2. Add edge labels: Add a custom attribute to the edges to label them with strings:

        G.Edges.Label = {'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'}'; 

3. Visualize the Graph: Using the ‘plot’ method, you can visualize the graph:

        p = plot(G, 'EdgeLabel', G.Edges.Label); 

The above implementation ensures a correct representation labelling the edges with string type data.

• You can follow the documentation for ‘digraph’ to know more about its usage: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/digraph.html
• Follow this for ‘plot’: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2024b/matlab/ref/graph.plot.html
• ‘biograph’ object and method removal: https://www.mathworks.com/help/bioinfo/release-notes.html?startrelease=R2021b&endrelease=R2024b&rntext=biograph&groupby=release&sortby=descending&searchHighlight=biograph

I hope this helps to solve your problem. Thanks.