Re: [igraph] Using Igraph routines in Java

[Tamas Nepusz]

Hi Shrijeet,

> I believe in past folks mush have faced similar situations, using  
> igraph from Java code. One approach could be using Jython (embedded)  
> as explain here
Although I'm not too familiar with Jython, I don't think that would  
work. The problem is that there are several "flavours" of Python:  
CPython (this is what most people call Python); Jython (a Python  
implementation in Java); IronPython (Python in .NET); PyPy (Python in  
Python) and so on. igraph is a module for CPython. The reason why it  
wouldn't work with other Python flavours is that the "glue code"  
between the Python layer and the actual igraph library is written in  
C. (If there's a Jython expert out there who can confirm or refute  
this claim, please stand forward).

A Java interface for igraph has already been proposed on this mailing  
list earlier. As we have an interface generator for igraph what Gabor  
uses to build the R interface, I started investigating the possibility  
of generating a Java interface for igraph using the Java Native  
Interface (JNI). If you check out the source tree from Launchpad and  
take a look at interfaces/java, you'll see how far I got. Practically,  
I am convinced that it is possible to generate an interface between  
igraph and Java using this approach, but since I don't use Java too  
often, chances are that this interface will be finished if someone is  
willing to develop and maintain it. This is the README file that  
summarises my experiments:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Eigraph/igraph/0.6-main/annotate/head%3A/interfaces/java/README

--
T.