Warning

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

Install¶

NetworkX requires Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, or 3.6. If you do not already have a Python environment configured on your computer, please see the instructions for installing the full scientific Python stack.

Note

If you are on Windows and want to install optional packages (e.g., scipy), then you will need to install a Python distribution such as Anaconda, Enthought Canopy, Python(x,y), WinPython, or Pyzo. If you use one of these Python distribution, please refer to their online documentation.

Below we assume you have the default Python environment already configured on your computer and you intend to install networkx inside of it. If you want to create and work with Python virtual environments, please follow instructions on venv and virtual environments.

First, make sure you have the latest version of pip (the Python package manager) installed. If you do not, refer to the Pip documentation and install pip first.

Install the released version¶

Install the current release of networkx with pip:

$ pip install networkx

To upgrade to a newer release use the --upgrade flag:

$ pip install --upgrade networkx

If you do not have permission to install software systemwide, you can install into your user directory using the --user flag:

$ pip install --user networkx

Alternatively, you can manually download networkx from GitHub or PyPI. To install one of these versions, unpack it and run the following from the top-level source directory using the Terminal:

$ pip install .

Install the development version¶

If you have Git installed on your system, it is also possible to install the development version of networkx.

Before installing the development version, you may need to uninstall the standard version of networkx using pip:

$ pip uninstall networkx

Then do:

$ git clone https://github.com/networkx/networkx.git
$ cd networkx
$ pip install -e .

The pip install -e . command allows you to follow the development branch as it changes by creating links in the right places and installing the command line scripts to the appropriate locations.

Then, if you want to update networkx at any time, in the same directory do:

$ git pull

Optional packages¶

Note

Some optional packages (e.g., scipy, gdal) may require compiling C or C++ code. If you have difficulty installing these packages with pip, please review the instructions for installing the full scientific Python stack.

The following optional packages provide additional functionality.

NumPy (>= 1.12.0) provides matrix representation of graphs and is used in some graph algorithms for high-performance matrix computations.
SciPy (>= 0.19.0) provides sparse matrix representation of graphs and many numerical scientific tools.
pandas (>= 0.20.0) provides a DataFrame, which is a tabular data structure with labeled axes.
Matplotlib (>= 2.0.2) provides flexible drawing of graphs.
PyGraphviz and pydot (>= 1.2.3) provide graph drawing and graph layout algorithms via GraphViz.
PyYAML provides YAML format reading and writing.
gdal provides shapefile format reading and writing.
lxml used for GraphML XML format.

To install networkx and all optional packages, do:

$ pip install networkx[all]

To explicitly install all optional packages, do:

$ pip install numpy scipy pandas matplotlib pygraphviz pydot pyyaml gdal

Or, install any optional package (e.g., numpy) individually:

$ pip install numpy

Testing¶

NetworkX uses the Python nose testing package. If you don’t already have that package installed, follow the directions on the nose homepage.

Test a source distribution¶

You can test the complete package from the unpacked source directory with:

nosetests networkx -v

Test an installed package¶

If you have a file-based (not a Python egg) installation you can test the installed package with:

>>> import networkx as nx
>>> nx.test()

or:

python -c "import networkx as nx; nx.test()"

Testing for developers¶

You can test any or all of NetworkX by using the nosetests test runner.

First make sure the NetworkX version you want to test is in your PYTHONPATH (either installed or pointing to your unpacked source directory).

Then you can run individual test files with:

nosetests path/to/file

or all tests found in dir and an directories contained in dir:

nosetests path/to/dir

By default nosetests does not test docutils style tests in Python modules but you can turn that on with:

nosetests --with-doctest

For doctests in stand-alone files NetworkX uses the extension txt so you can add:

nosetests --with-doctest --doctest-extension=txt

to also execute those tests.

These options are on by default if you run nosetests from the root of the NetworkX distribution since they are specified in the setup.cfg file found there.