Deriving key insights within your data

In recent years, the amount of data generated has catapulted to around 2.5 quintillion bytes each day (1). With so much data at hand, making sense of it all poses a real challenge to organizations. Yet being able to use that data is essential to deriving real business insights and making more informed decisions as a result. By utilizing a JS graph library within your application, you’re able to create rich and customized graph data visualizations for your audience, and enable them to visually navigate data and zero in on the information that’s most relevant. Analyzing your data becomes much less of a daunting task. You’ll be able to unlock new insights that may have previously gone unnoticed.

Building your application

It’s no secret that building an application from scratch is a time-consuming process. Depending on the resources available and the expertise of developers, it can take anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand development hours. Testing and iterating on different ideas can also add to the time and effort needed to build an app that meets your expectations.

With a JS graph library, you can cut down on development time and ease the workload required to develop and integrate network visualization capabilities into your application. JS libraries allow you to test new ideas and expand on existing ones by simply adapting the existing code to your needs.

In addition to this, documentation is often included with JavaScript libraries to help guide developers. Ultimately, by reducing the time it takes to launch an application and the resources required to do so, the time-to-market speed and cost savings can provide a major competitive advantage. This translates to more opportunities to expand on existing projects or explore new endeavors and can positively impact your bottom line.

Ease of use

The ability to make data exploration accessible to your end user is essential in adding value and improving the overall experience of your application. With a JS graph library, you’re able to implement out-of-the-box functions and features that allow your users to more easily interact with their data at scale. Moreover, it’s possible to enrich your visualizations with components that help end users communicate their findings.

If you’re building an app that requires visualizing large amounts of connected data, you may be considering using a JS graph library to help you visualize and interact with your data. A JS graph visualization library can help you effectively visualize and interact with your data, solving common business and technical challenges across industries and organizations. Read on to discover why a JS graph visualization library is the key to meeting your data visualization needs.

3 reasons to use a JavaScript graph visualization library

Ready to start your own graph project?

Say "goodbye" to hours of prototyping and kickstart your project directly within the Ogma Playground where you can start from scratch or choose from one of our many examples to get started.

We’ve selected 12 of the most popular JavaScript graph visualization libraries. Below you’ll find essential information about each one, including information on integration, ability to handle large graphs, interactive features, and more. This list is broken down into three main categories: commercial libraries, general purpose libraries, and specialized open source libraries.

Commercial JavaScript libraries

Commercial libraries offer the most extensive features and options, not to mention superior documentation and support. Because they come with a cost, they may not be well adapted for some projects.

GoJS

This is a JavaScript / TypeScript library used for building interactive graphs and diagrams. It includes several built-in layouts and extensible tools, and is compatible with multiple frameworks including React, Angular, and Vue.js. GoJS only has Canvas and SVG rendering.

Ogma

This JavaScript graph visualization library leverages WebGL rendering and is a powerful solution to develop large-scale interactive graph visualizations. It features many layout algorithms, geo-mode, annotation layers, visual groupings, numerous styling options, and comes with many examples and templates. Ogma supports multiple integration frameworks for maximum flexibility.

Keylines

This graph visualization engine supports canvas and WebGL rendering. It supports many graph algorithms and offers many different layouts. Keylines only supports the React framework for integration.

yFiles

Developed by yWorks, this library enables you to visualize any kind of graph, diagram, or network. It supports a wide range of desktop and web technologies, as well as many layout algorithms. yFiles also has a large features set and many extensibility options. There are several options to integrate yFiles with your application including Angular and React.

General JavaScript libraries

General libraries can be adapted for many graph visualization use cases. These free libraries may be less powerful than their commercial counterparts, however, or lack integration options, requiring a bigger time investment.

D3

The JS library is an especially popular one. It is used to manipulate documents based on data using HTML, SVG, and CSS. However, using it to build a graph visualization solution is highly time consuming. There is no set integration framework so you have to build one yourself and render all behaviors, requiring a large time investment..

Vega.js

This is a framework built on top of D3 used for creating interactive visualization designs. Specifications are written in JSON files instead of in JavaScript. Development of Vega.js is led by the University of Washington Interactive Data Lab, and the library is released under a BSD-3 license.

Vis.js

This browser-based library is under the MIT license. It works with large, dynamic datasets. Vis.js offers common customization options for styling nodes, labels, animations, and more. The layouts and algorithms are limited, however, and it’s difficult to customize the library beyond what is already offered.

G6

This is a canvas-based graph visualization framework that integrates with React via its sister library Graphin. It’s well adapted for visualizing small to moderate sized graphs. G6 provides many algorithms and styling options. The implementations and API can be tricky, however, and parts of the documentation are in Chinese.

Specialized open source JavaScript libraries

Open source libraries are available for anyone to use for free. Some may come with certain limitations or steep learning curves.

Sigma.js

This JS library is developed and maintained by the Media Lab at Sciences Po, and has been released under the MIT license. Developers can use it to publish network and graph visualizations on web pages, as well as to integrate network exploration into web applications. Sigma.js can be integrated with React applications.

Next Step

Choosing a JS graph library

If you’re starting to dive deeper into your decision making process, we’ve also put together a list of some of the most popular JS graph libraries to visualize your graph data. It’s a good place to start for a high-level comparison of graph libraries. We also wrote a starter guide for developers on JS graph libraries for network visualization.

Scroll to discover the top 12 JS graph libraries to visualize your graph data

Visualizing data helps us better understand how processes work and how they connect with each other. JavaScript graph library solutions are a great way to visualize data as graphs in an intuitive manner. With a wide range of JavaScript graph libraries available on the market, developers have a great pool of readily accessible tools to visualize their data as a graph. Whether you're looking for commercial solutions, open source options, or more specialized libraries, you'll be sure to find what you need. 

Ready to launch your project? Our own JS graph library, Ogma, comes equipped with everything you need to easily visualize and analyze your graph data and increase your productivity across the board. Ogma leverages WebGL rendering, a modular architecture and state-of-the-art layout algorithms to make the visualization of large graphs not only possible, but powerful. Experience for yourself just how much this library can do for your project.

Graph visualization doesn't have to be rocket science

With tutorials and templates covering how to import data or how to integrate Ogma with popular JS frameworks, you can have a working app in 15 minutes. Our 50+ ready-to-use examples cover all you need to customize your app, from coloring nodes to optimizing a layout or grouping nodes in clusters. Cut down on dev time and focus on what you want to deliver.

Example Library

The Ogma website is packed with ready-made examples to help demonstrate the capabilities of Ogma. Begin with an existing example and expand on it to test new ideas.

Tutorials

Discover how to integrate data from Neo4j or a CSV file, how to integrate Ogma with React or Angular and the basics of getting started with Ogma. Our tutorials walk you through the main topics you need to be successful.

Professional Services

Our graph visualization experts will be available to support the development of your app and help kickstart your project off on the right foot.

The all-in-one JavaScript library for large-scale interactive graph visualizations

Ogma is a commercial JavaScript library that can be leveraged to develop powerful, large-scale interactive graph visualizations. Ogma comes equipped with everything you need to easily visualize and analyze your graph data and increase your productivity across the board.

"We could not do what we do today without this kind of technology and what we can achieve ​with Ogma in terms of display and aesthetics of the solution is important to our overall success."

Olivier Bonsignour

EVP, Product Development at CAST