Warning

This documents an unmaintained version of NetworkX. Please upgrade to a maintained version and see the current NetworkX documentation.

Graph types

NetworkX provides data structures and methods for storing graphs.

All NetworkX graph classes allow (hashable) Python objects as nodes and any Python object can be assigned as an edge attribute.

The choice of graph class depends on the structure of the graph you want to represent.

Which graph class should I use?

Graph Type	NetworkX Class
Undirected Simple	Graph
Directed Simple	DiGraph
With Self-loops	Graph, DiGraph
With Parallel edges	MultiGraph, MultiDiGraph

Basic graph types

• Graph—Undirected graphs with self loops
  • Overview
  • Methods
• DiGraph—Directed graphs with self loops
  • Overview
  • Methods
• MultiGraph—Undirected graphs with self loops and parallel edges
  • Overview
  • Methods
• MultiDiGraph—Directed graphs with self loops and parallel edges
  • Overview
  • Methods
• Ordered Graphs—Consistently ordered graphs

Note

NetworkX uses dicts to store the nodes and neighbors in a graph. So the reporting of nodes and edges for the base graph classes will not necessarily be consistent across versions and platforms. If you need the order of nodes and edges to be consistent (e.g., when writing automated tests), please see OrderedGraph, OrderedDiGraph, OrderedMultiGraph, or OrderedMultiDiGraph, which behave like the base graph classes but give a consistent order for reporting of nodes and edges.