Class Configuration

object --+
         |
        Configuration

Class representing igraph configuration details.

General things

The configuration of igraph is stored in the form of name-value pairs. This object provides an interface to the configuration data using the syntax known from dict:

>>> c=Configuration()
>>> c["general.verbose"] = True
>>> print c["general.verbose"]
True

Configuration keys are organized into sections, and the name to be used for a given key is always in the form section.keyname, like general.verbose in the example above. In that case, general is the name of the configuration section, and verbose is the name of the key. If the name of the section is omitted, it defaults to general, so general.verbose can be referred to as verbose:

>>> c=Configuration()
>>> c["verbose"] = True
>>> print c["general.verbose"]
True

User-level configuration is stored in ~/.igraphrc per default on Linux and Mac OS X systems, or in C:\Documents and Settings\username\.igraphrc on Windows systems. However, this configuration is read only when igraph is launched through its shell interface defined in igraph.app.shell. This behaviour might change before version 1.0.

Known configuration keys

The known configuration keys are presented below, sorted by section. When referring to them in program code, don't forget to add the section name, expect in the case of section general.

General settings

These settings are all stored in section general.

• shells: the list of preferred Python shells to be used with the command-line igraph script. The shells in the list are tried one by one until any of them is found on the system. igraph functions are then imported into the main namespace of the shell and the shell is launched. Known shells and their respective class names to be used can be found in igraph.app.shell. Example: IPythonShell, ClassicPythonShell. This is the default, by the way.
• verbose: whether igraph should talk more than really necessary. For instance, if set to True, some functions display progress bars.

Application settings

These settings specify the external applications that are possibly used by igraph. They are all stored in section apps.

• image_viewer: image viewer application. If set to an empty string, it will be determined automatically from the platform igraph runs on. On Mac OS X, it defaults to the Preview application. On Linux, it chooses a viewer from several well-known Linux viewers like gthumb, kuickview and so on (see the source code for the full list). On Windows, it defaults to the system's built-in image viewer.

Plotting settings

These settings specify the default values used by plotting functions. They are all stored in section plotting.

• layout: default graph layout algorithm to be used.
• palette: default palette to be used for converting integer numbers to colors. See colors.Palette for more information. Valid palette names are stored in colors.palettes.