Spanner Graph Notebook: Explore Your Data Visually

The Spanner Graph Notebook tool provides an efficient way for you to query Spanner Graph visually in a notebook environment (e.g. Jupyter Notebook and Google Colab). Using GQL query syntax, you can can extract graph insights and relationship patterns, including node and edge properties, neighbor analysis, schema metadata, and diverse layout topologies.

Install dependencies

All dependencies below must be installed before using the tool.

Install the gcloud CLI

gcloud CLI is needed for authentication. Follow the installation manual to install.

Install dependencies

Download this package and install its dependencies. Python dependencies should ideally be installed in a managed Python environment using tools like conda or virtualenv.

When in the root directory of the package, follow the command below to create a managed Python environment (example based on virtualenv) and install dependencies.

# Create the virtualenv `viz`.
python3 -m venv viz

# Activate the virtualenv.
source viz/bin/activate

# Install dependencies.
pip install .

Using

Launch notebook and follow steps in sample.ipynb

When in the root directory of the package, run jupyter notebook to launch Jupyter Notebook.

jupyter notebook

As Jupyter local server runs, it will open up a web portal. You can open open the sample.ipynb to step through an example.

You must run %load_ext spanner_graphs to load this package. sample.ipynb contains this cell already.

%%spanner_graph magic command

This package provides a %%spanner_graph magic command, which visualizes graph data in the notebook output cell.

Query and visualize a local dataset with --mock flag

Using the --mock flag for %%spanner_graph, you can visualize local graph datasets without connecting to a live Cloud Spanner database. The mock dataset renders a network of person and account nodes, along with edges in between. There is an inserted cell in sample.ipynb for the code below.

%%spanner_graph --mock

Visualize graph queries from your Spanner Graph database

Authentication

To connect to your Spanner database, you need to first authenticate via gcloud auth. gcloud CLI is needed to use the tool. Follow the installation manual to install.

sample.ipynb has inserted a code cell for authentication below. Running this opens a new browser tab for the Google Cloud authentication process.

!gcloud auth application-default login

Query and visualize Spanner Graph data

Using the %%spanner_graph magic command, you can visualize graph query results from your Spanner database.

The magic command needs to be used with your GCP resource info and a query string:

• a GCP project id for --project option
• a Spanner instance id for --instance option
• a Spanner Graph database id for --database option
• a GQL query string

Query Requirements

Use TO_JSON function to return graph elements

Graph queries must use TO_JSON function in the RETURN statement to visualize paths, nodes and edges. We recommend visualizing paths for data completeness and ease of use.

👍 Good example returning a path as JSON.


GRAPH FinGraph
MATCH query_path = (person:Person {id: 5})-[owns:Owns]->(accnt:Account)
RETURN TO_JSON(query_path) AS path_json

👍 Good example returning a path as JSON in a multiple-hop query.

GRAPH FinGraph
MATCH query_path = (src:Account {id: 9})-[edge]->{1,3}(dst:Account)
RETURN TO_JSON(query_path) as path_json

👍 Good example returning multiple paths as JSON.

GRAPH FinGraph
MATCH path_1 = (person:Person {id: 5})-[:Owns]->(accnt:Account),
      path_2 = (src:Account {id: 9})-[:Transfers]->(dst:Account)
RETURN TO_JSON(path_1) as path_1,
       TO_JSON(path_2) as path_2

👎 Anti-example returning nodes properties rather than JSON format graph elements.
   Scalar results other than JSON format graph elements cannot be visualized.

GRAPH FinGraph
MATCH (person:Person {id: 5})-[owns:Owns]->(accnt:Account)
RETURN person.id AS person,
       owns.amount AS owns,
       accnt.id AS accnt;

👎 Anti-example returning each node and edges in JSON format verbosely. This will
   work but not as easy as returning a path directly.

GRAPH FinGraph
MATCH (person:Person {id: 5})-[owns:Owns]->(accnt:Account)
RETURN TO_JSON(person) AS person_json,
       TO_JSON(owns) AS owns_json,
       TO_JSON(accnt) AS accnt_json,

Testing changes

After adding new changes, please run unit and integration tests with the command below:

cd spanner_graphs && python -m unittest discover -s tests -p "*_test.py"