grph meta

Display detailed metadata from a GEXF file.

Synopsis

grph meta <file> [--json]

Description

The meta command extracts and displays the metadata section of a GEXF file. This includes information stored in the <meta> element of the GEXF XML:

• Creator - The tool or person who created the file
• Description - A description of the graph
• Last Modified - When the file was last modified
• Version - The GEXF format version
• Mode - Static or dynamic graph
• Default Edge Type - Directed or undirected

This is useful for understanding the provenance and purpose of a graph file.

Arguments

Argument	Description
file	Path to the GEXF file (required)

Options

Option	Description
--json	Output as JSON instead of a table
--help	Show help message

Examples

Basic Usage

grph meta social-network.gexf

Output:

                          Graph Metadata
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Property          ┃ Value                                       ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Version           │ 1.2                                         │
│ Creator           │ Gephi 0.10.1                                │
│ Description       │ Social network of software developers       │
│ Last Modified     │ 2024-01-15                                  │
│ Mode              │ static                                      │
│ Default Edge Type │ undirected                                  │
│ Node Count        │ 1250                                        │
│ Edge Count        │ 8420                                        │
└───────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

JSON Output

grph meta social-network.gexf --json

{
  "creator": "Gephi 0.10.1",
  "description": "Social network of software developers",
  "last_modified": "2024-01-15",
  "mode": "static",
  "default_edge_type": "undirected",
  "version": "1.2",
  "node_count": 1250,
  "edge_count": 8420
}

Difference from grph info

Command	Purpose
grph info	Quick summary + available attributes list
grph meta	Full metadata (creator, description, dates)

Use info for a quick overview including attribute names. Use meta when you need the full metadata including who created the file and when.

Missing Metadata

If metadata fields are not present in the GEXF file, they will show as "N/A":

┃ Creator           ┃ N/A                                         ┃
┃ Description       ┃ N/A                                         ┃

Not all GEXF files include metadata. The <meta> element is optional in the GEXF specification.