multinet (version 3.0.3)

Getting networks: IO: Reading and writing multilayer networks from/to file

Description

These functions are used to store a multilayer network to a file or load it from a file.

The format used by the package is the following:

-- comment lines start with two dashes (--)

#TYPE multiplex -- or: "#TYPE multilayer", if there are inter-layer edges

#ACTOR ATTRIBUTES AttributeName1,STRING AttributeName2,NUMERIC -- etc.

#NODE ATTRIBUTES LayerName1,AttributeName1,STRING LayerName1,AttributeName2,NUMERIC LayerName2,AttributeName3,STRING -- etc.

#EDGE ATTRIBUTES -- if type is multiplex (default), edge attributes are indicated as follows: LayerName1,AttributeName,STRING LayerName2,AttributeName,NUMERIC -- etc. -- if type is multilayer, edge attributes are indicated as follows: -- LayerName1,LayerName1,AttributeName,STRING -- LayerName1,LayerName2,AttributeName,NUMERIC -- etc.

#LAYERS -- if type is multiplex (default), layers are indicated as follows: LayerName1,UNDIRECTED,AttributeValueList... LayerName2,DIRECTED,AttributeValueList... -- etc. -- if type is multilayer, layers are indicated as follows: -- LayerName1,LayerName1,UNDIRECTED,AttributeValueList... -- LayerName2,LayerName2,DIRECTED,AttributeValueList... -- LayerName1,LayerName2,DIRECTED -- etc. and all intra-layer directionalities should be listed before inter-layer directionalities

#ACTORS ActorName1,AttributeValueList... ActorName2,AttributeValueList... -- etc.

#NODES ActorName1,LayerName1,AttributeValueList... ActorName1,LayerName2,AttributeValueList... -- etc.

#EDGES -- if TYPE is multiplex (default), edges are indicated as follows: ActorName1,ActorName2,LayerName1,AttributeValueList... -- etc. -- if TYPE is multilayer, edges are instead indicated as follows: -- ActorName1,LayerName1,ActorName2,LayerName2,AttributeValueList... -- etc.

----------------------------------

If the #LAYERS section is empty, undirected layers are created as mentioned in the #EDGES section.

If the #LAYER ATTRIBUTES, #ACTOR ATTRIBUTES, #NODE ATTRIBUTES or #EDGE ATTRIBUTES sections are empty, no attributes are created.

The #LAYERS #ACTORS and #NODES sections are useful only if attributes are present, or if there are actors not present in any layer, or if there are isolated nodes, otherwise they can be omitted.

If no section is specified, #EDGES is the default.

Therefore, a minimalistic undirected multiplex network file would look like this: ---------------------------------- Matteo,Luca,Facebook Matteo,Mark,Facebook Luca,Mark,Twitter ----------------------------------

Usage

read_ml(file, name="unnamed", sep=',', aligned=FALSE)
write_ml(mlnetwork, file, format="multilayer", layers=character(0),
  sep=',', merge.actors=TRUE, all.actors=FALSE)

Arguments

file

The path of the file storing the multilayer network.

name

The name of the multilayer network.

mlnetwork

A multilayer network.

layers

If specific layers are passed to the function, only those layers are saved to file.

format

Either "multilayer", to use the package's internal format, or "graphml".

sep

The character used in the file to separate text fields.

aligned

If true, all actors are added to all layers.

merge.actors

Whether the nodes corresponding to each single actor should be merged into a single node (true) or kept separated (false), when format="graphml" is used.

all.actors

Whether all actors in the multilayer network should be included in the output file (true) or only those present in at least one of the input layers (false), when format="graphml" and merge.actors=TRUE are used.

Value

read_ml returns a multilayer network. write_ml does not return any value.

See Also

Getting networks: predefined, Getting networks: generation

Examples

# NOT RUN {
# writing a network to file...
file <- tempfile("aucs.mpx")
net <- ml_aucs()
write_ml(net,file)
# ...and reading it back into a variable
net <- read_ml(file,"AUCS")
net
# the following network has more nodes, because all
# actors are replicated to all graphs
net_aligned <- read_ml(file,"AUCS",aligned=TRUE)
net_aligned
# }