In the last chapter, you learned how to create visualizations of hierarchical data: unidirectional connected node networks. In this chapter, we will explore the visualization of other types of networks, which may contain disconnected nodes and sub-networks, allowing for directional flows as well as cycles.
A simple graph connecting lines to points can be drawn with basic D3 tools that you already learned how to use, but it's always much easier if a generator function calculates the coordinates for us. D3 provides several of those functions for popular network visualizations, revealing different aspects of connected graphs, with emphasis on either the nodes, links, or layout.
This chapter will describe the standard data structures used for network data and show how to apply them to create different topologies for network graphs, using three modules...