How do you plot a graph evolving over time? - matlab

Question

I have data about a network showing edges and nodes such as:
edges = ...
[5 7 1;
5 7 2;
5 11 2;
5 7 3;
5 11 3;
5 16 3;
5 7 4;
5 11 4;
5 16 4;
5 21 4];
I'd like to obtain multiple different plots based on how those edges evolve because those edges are the result of a long observation (e.g. one year).
Each edge occurs at a different moment and therefore, I'd like to get those six different plots separately.
Suppose, the first month I see these edges:
edges = ...
[5 7 1];
And in the second month, I see this:
edges = ...
[5 7 2;
5 11 2;];
And month by month, more edges are added until the complete data set show above is obtained.
EDIT
The third column is the moment identifier and using this article (Filter Matrix by some column value
) I can loop through the matrix and obtain a filtered_edges to use in the graph() function.
END EDIT
The easy way would be to create different edges files and read them one by one, but is there a way to do this programmatically with Matlab?

Answer 1

See the mathworks documentation for details. For your case, here you go:
data = rand(6,2);
figure
% You need to somehow fix your axes, so that they don't resize
axis tight manual
ax = gca;
ax.NextPlot = 'replaceChildren';
% Let's record this to file
v = VideoWriter('myAnimation.avi');
v.FrameRate = 10; % slow down the animation
open(v);
loops = size(data,1);
F(loops) = struct('cdata',[],'colormap',[]); % Struct to hold frames
for i = 1:loops
plot(data(1:i,1),data(1:i,2),'*'); % plot what you want in the new frame
drawnow % clear and draw new frame
frame = getframe;
F(i) = frame; % if you want to animate locally you only need this
pause(0.1); % this just slows down locally, can be removed and does NOT influence the saved video
writeVideo(v,frame); % this is only if you want to save to file
end
close(v);