Representing Networkx graphs as strings in a consistent way

Question

I have multiple Networkx graphs (with node attributes), and I need to represent them as strings. There are several ways to do that, but I need to always get the same string for equal graphs (not isomorphic, by equal I mean that graphs_equal returns true). Is there a way to turn a graph into a string that guarantees this?

Answer 1

I think the sort of thing done below should work.

import networkx as nx


def graph_to_str(g):
    return str(sorted(list(g.nodes.data()))), str(
        sorted(e if e[0] < e[1] else (e[1], e[0], e[2]) for e in list(g.edges.data()))
    )


g1 = nx.complete_graph(4)
g2 = nx.Graph([(1, 2), (2, 3), (0, 1), (1, 3), (0, 2), (0, 3)])

for g in [g1, g2]:
    nx.set_node_attributes(g, {1: {"hello": "world"}})
    nx.set_edge_attributes(g, {(2, 3): {"foo": "bar"}})

print(nx.utils.graphs_equal(g1, g2), graph_to_str(g1) == graph_to_str(g2))  # True True

There may also be some other way explained in this documentation on reading/writing Networkx graphs.