This is an interesting concept. We have a slightly different set of use cases since the role of our CX format is network exchange and the "NiceCX" object is for convenient management but not for analysis. Our users typically want to get a network, create an Igraph or NetworkX graph, use it, and then save results in CX. The tricky parts are (1) managing the parts of the CX document that don't translate and (2) preserving the CX node and edge ids (which are supposed to be persistent).

The transparent API approach makes me think of something like this:

The CX from the server becomes a "portable graph"

pg = get_pg_from_ndex(url_of_a_public_network)

pg encapsulates the CX with an igraph object and/or networkx object.

ig.TransparentAPI.incident(pg) works. There is no back conversion until needed.

something like

ndex.upload(pg)

also works - converting the igraph at that time. All of the graphic style attributes, network metadata, etc. of the CX have been preserved.

ideally, the users can also perform networkx operations on the same portable object.

Does this make sense?
Dexter

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

This has been stale for a while, but a few things are happening in the background that are perhaps worth logging here:

• manyigraph.Graph methods have been de facto delegated to functions in separate modules
• @ntamas is working on a new implementation of the whole Python interface that will hopefully be less centered around a monolithicGraph class

Those are relevant because once the functions that provide implementation are decoupled from theGraph class, one could in principle add a decorator to all of them along the lines of

deftransparentAPI(function):defwrapper(graph,*args,**kwargs):# Universal input adaptergraph_type='igraph'ifisinstance(graph,nx.Graph):graph=ig.from_networkx(graph)graph_type='networkx'# Call functionres=function(graph,*args,**kwargs)# Universal output adapterifisinstance(res,ig.Graph)andgraph_type=='networkx':res=res.to_networkx()returnres

and one would then wrap any function that we want to be part of this API as:

@transparentAPIdefbetweenness(graph, ...):    ...

In practice, for now the actual functions are often hidden from the user because we do not want to confuse the user with two ways of performing each operation (method and function) without broadcasting about this shift in attitude beforehand. However, that is more of a decision making issue than a technical one by now, and we could start piloting this API anytime.

@iosonofabio Before you proceed with this, it should be discussed at the next meeting. There was in fact discussion about this in your absence.

Sounds great, happy to hear things are moving and looking forward to rejoining the conversation!