# The Graph Gem

> Last updated: 2011-04-26

![Example Multi-colored Graph](/img/graph_example.jpg)

One of my favorite gems is [Graph](http://rubygems.org/gems/graph). At
work we have a lot of data and graph makes it easy to see patterns and
get the 10,000 foot view.  The diagram is a visual representation of a
several thousand line XML file.  I used Nokogiri to extract the data
and Graph to build the visual representation.  I wrote about a hundred
lines to generate the diagram, much of which is parsing the XML files
and some additional CSV files.