9 Graphing

Org-roam provides graphing capabilities to explore interconnections between notes. This is done by performing SQL queries and generating images using Graphviz. The graph can also be navigated: see Roam Protocol.

The entry point to graph creation is ‘org-roam-graph’.

• Function: org-roam-graph & optional arg file node-query

  Build and possibly display a graph for FILE from NODE-QUERY. If FILE is nil, default to current buffer’s file name. ARG may be any of the following values:

  • ‘nil’ show the graph.
  • ‘C-u’ show the graph for FILE.
  • ‘C-u N’ show the graph for FILE limiting nodes to N steps.
  • ‘C-u C-u’ build the graph.
  • ‘C-u -’ build the graph for FILE.
  • ‘C-u -N’ build the graph for FILE limiting nodes to N steps.
• User Option: org-roam-graph-executable

  Path to the graphing executable (in this case, Graphviz). Set this if Org-roam is unable to find the Graphviz executable on your system.

  You may also choose to use ‘neato’ in place of ‘dot’, which generates a more compact graph layout.

• User Option: org-roam-graph-viewer

  Org-roam defaults to using Firefox (located on PATH) to view the SVG, but you may choose to set it to:

  1. A string, which is a path to the program used
  2. a function accepting a single argument: the graph file path.

  ‘nil’ uses ‘view-file’ to view the graph.