R networkD3 package: forceNetwork() coloring

Question

I really like how this network looks:

Source: https://christophergandrud.github.io/networkD3/

There are multiple colors for each sector, where each color represents some distinct portion of nodes in the network that are far enough separated from the other nodes.

However, within any one specific sector, I don't like how the src nodes are the same color as the target nodes, and so I asked a question (https://stackoverflow.com/a/35371131/3878253) for how to distinguish the two colors.

Now is there a way that I can expand on this code to get the multiple color scheme back (to distinguish the various sectors from each other) yet retain the nice src/target difference in color? Here is the code:

# Load package
library(networkD3)
library(dplyr) # to make the joins easier

# Create fake data
src <- c("A", "A", "A", "A",
         "B", "B", "C", "C", "D")
target <- c("B", "C", "D", "J",
            "E", "F", "G", "H", "I")
networkData <- data.frame(src, target, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

nodes <- data.frame(name = unique(c(src, target)), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
nodes$id <- 0:(nrow(nodes) - 1)


# create a data frame of the edges that uses id 0:9 instead of their names
edges <- networkData %>%
   left_join(nodes, by = c("src" = "name")) %>%
   select(-src) %>%
   rename(source = id) %>%
   left_join(nodes, by = c("target" = "name")) %>%
   select(-target) %>%
   rename(target = id)

edges$width <- 1

# make a grouping variable that will match to colours
nodes$group <- ifelse(nodes$name %in% src, "lions", "tigers")


ColourScale <- 'd3.scaleOrdinal()
            .domain(["lions", "tigers"])
           .range(["#FF6900", "#694489"]);'

forceNetwork(Links = edges, Nodes = nodes, 
             Source = "source",
             Target = "target",
             NodeID ="name",
             Group = "group",
             Value = "width",
             opacity = 0.9,
             zoom = TRUE,
             colourScale = JS(ColourScale))

R networkD3 package: forceNetwork() coloring

2 Answers