University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

[Webdot](http://www.graphviz.org/webdot/) isn\'t available for Mac OS X,
and as I use an iBook running Panther for all my development work
(before moving to a Linux box to host the results) I wanted to have the
same functionality on my iBook. This can be achieved by hacking a
[simplified version of
webdot](http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/webdot.cgi.pl).
This Perl script creates a virtual web browser to serve the image. I\'ve
simplified things somewhat, but it works.  
  
The two things you need to set in the script **dot.cgi** are the path to
your copy of the Graphviz program dot,and a directory where dot can
write temporary files (I use **/tmp**).  
  
You can get a copy of the script
[here](http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/dot/dot.cgi).  
  
To render an image of a graph on the fly you insert an **img**  
tag with the **src** attribute comprising:  
  

1.  the path to the CGI script, e.g. /cgi-bin/dot.cgi
2.  a \'/\' delimiter
3.  the URL of the graph file, e.g.
    [http://localhost/\~rpage/dot/leda.7.46.gml.dot](http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/dot/leda.dot)  
4.  the extension of the image format you want (e.g., png, svg, etc.)
    preceeded by a dot \".\"

  
  
As an example, here is the dot file
[http://localhost/\~rpage/dot/leda.dot](http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/dot/leda.dot)
as a PNG image, using the HTML:  
  
![](/cgi-bin/dot.cgi/http://localhost/~rpage/dot/leda.dot.png)  
  
![](http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dot.cgi/http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/dot/leda.dot.png)  
  
The source file for this graph looks like this:  

    graph G {
       node [width=.2,height=.2,fontsize=10];
       edge [fontsize=10,len=2];
       0 [label="0"];
       1 [label="3"];
       2 [label="4"];
       3 [label="5"];
       4 [label="6"];
       5 [label="7"];
       0 -- 1 [label="13"];
       0 -- 2 [label="12"];
       0 -- 5 [label="8"];
       0 -- 4 [label="71"];
       1 -- 5 [label="84"];
       1 -- 4 [label="8"];
       2 -- 5 [label="18"];
       2 -- 4 [label="11"];
       2 -- 3 [label="51"];
       3 -- 4 [label="87"];
    }


Webdot isn't available for Mac OS X, and as I use an iBook running Panther for all my development work (before moving to a Linux box to host the results) I wanted to have the same functionality on my iBook. This can be achieved by hacking a simplified version of webdot. This Perl script creates a virtual web browser to serve the image. I've simplified things somewhat, but it works.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Render DOT files on the fly on Mac OS X