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Graph Implementation In C++ Using Adjacency List

Last Updated: November 10, 2019

This Tutorial Explains The Implementation of Graphs In C++. You Will Also Learn About
Di erent Types, Representations, and Applications of Graphs:

A graph is a non-linear data structure. A graph can be de ned as a collection of Nodes which
are also called “vertices” and “edges” that connect two or more vertices.

A graph can also be seen as a cyclic tree where vertices do not have a parent-child relationship
but maintain a complex relationship among them.

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 What You Will Learn: [show]
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Whats Is A Graph In C++?

As stated above, a graph in C++ is a non-linear data structure de ned as a collection of
vertices and edges.

Following is an example of a graph data structure.

Given above is an example graph G. Graph G is a set of vertices {A,B,C,D,E} and a set of edges
{(A,B),(B,C),(A,D),(D,E),(E,C),(B,E),(B,D)}.

Types of Graphs – Directed And Undirected Graph

A graph in which the edges do not have directions is called the Undirected graph. The graph
shown above is an undirected graph.

A graph in which the edges have directions associated with them is called a Directed graph.

Given below is an example of a directed graph.

In the directed graph shown above, edges form an ordered pair wherein each edge represents a
speci c path Resources
Home from one vertex to another
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called “Initial Node” while the vertex into which the path terminates is called the “Terminal
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Node”.

Thus in above graph, the set of vertices is {A, B, C, D, E} and the set of edges is {(A,B),(A,D),
(B,C),(B,E),(D,E)(E,C)}.

We will discuss the graph terminology or the common terms used in relation to the graph
below.

Graph Terminology

1. Vertex: Each node of the graph is called a vertex. In the above graph, A, B, C, and D are
the vertices of the graph.
2. Edge: The link or path between two vertices is called an edge. It connects two or more
vertices. The di erent edges in the above graph are AB, BC, AD, and DC.
3. Adjacent node: In a graph, if two nodes are connected by an edge then they are called
adjacent nodes or neighbors. In the above graph, vertices A and B are connected by edge
AB. Thus A and B are adjacent nodes.
4. Degree of the node: The number of edges that are connected to a particular node is
called the degree of the node. In the above graph, node A has a degree 2.
5. Path: The sequence of nodes that we need to follow when we have to travel from one
vertex to another in a graph is called the path. In our example graph, if we need to go
from node A to C, then the path would be A->B->C.
6. Closed path: If the initial node is the same as a terminal node, then that path is termed
as the closed path.
7. Simple path: A closed path in which all the other nodes are distinct is called a simple
path.
8. Cycle: A path in which there are no repeated edges or vertices and the rst and last
vertices are the same is called a cycle. In the above graph, A->B->C->D->A is a cycle.
9. Connected Graph: A connected graph is the one in which there is a path between each of
the vertices. This means that there is not a single vertex which is isolated or without a
connecting edge. The graph shown above is a connected graph. 
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 10. Complete Graph: A graph in which each node is connected to another is called the
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Complete graph. If N is the total number of nodes in a graph then the complete graph
contains N(N-1)/2 number of edges.
11. Weighted graph: A positive value assigned to each edge indicating its length (distance
between the vertices connected by an edge) is called weight. The graph containing
weighted edges is called a weighted graph. The weight of an edge e is denoted by w(e)
and it indicates the cost of traversing an edge.
12. Diagraph: A digraph is a graph in which every edge is associated with a speci c direction
and the traversal can be done in speci ed direction only.

Graph Representation
The way in which graph data structure is stored in memory is called “representation”. The graph
can be stored as a sequential representation or as a linked representation.

Both these types are described below.

Sequential Representation

In the sequential representation of graphs, we use the adjacency matrix. An adjacency matrix is
a matrix of size n x n where n is the number of vertices in the graph.

The rows and columns of the adjacency matrix represent the vertices in a graph. The matrix
element is set to 1 when there is an edge present between the vertices. If the edge is not
present then the element is set to 0.

Given below is an example graph that shows its adjacency matrix.

We have seen the adjacency matrix for the above graph. Note that since this is an undirected
graph, and we can say that the edge is present in both directions. For Example, as edge AB is
present, we can conclude that edge BA is also present.
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In the adjacency matrix, we can see the interactions of the vertices which are matrix elements
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that are set to 1 whenever the edge is present and to 0 when the edge is absent.

Now let us see the adjacency matrix of a directed graph.

As shown above, the intersection element in the adjacency matrix will be 1 if and only if there
is an edge directed from one vertex to another.

In the above graph, we have two edges from vertex A. One edge terminates into vertex B while
the second one terminates into vertex C. Thus in adjacency matrix the intersection of A & B is
set to 1 as the intersection of A & C.

Next, we will see the sequential representation for the weighted graph.

Given below is the weighted graph and its corresponding adjacency matrix.

We can see that the sequential representation of a weighted graph is di erent from the other
types of graphs. Here, the non-zero values in the adjacency matrix are replaced by the actual
weight of the edge.

The edge AB has weight = 4, thus in the adjacency matrix, we set the intersection of A and B to

4. Similarly, all the other non-zero values are changed to their respective weights.
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The adjacency list is easier to implement and follow. Traversal i.e. to check if there is an edge
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from one vertex to another takes O(1) time and removing an edge also takes O(1).

Whether the graph is sparse (fewer edges) or dense, it always takes more amount of space.

Linked Representation

We use the adjacency list for the linked representation of the graph. The adjacency list
representation maintains each node of the graph and a link to the nodes that are adjacent to
this node. When we traverse all the adjacent nodes, we set the next pointer to null at the end
of the list.

Let us rst consider an undirected graph and its adjacency list.

As shown above, we have a linked list (adjacency list) for each node. From vertex A, we have
edges to vertices B, C and D. Thus these nodes are linked to node A in the corresponding
adjacency list.

Next, we construct an adjacency list for the directed graph.

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In the above-directed graph, we see that there are no edges originating from vertex E. Hence
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the adjacency list for vertex E is empty.

Now let us construct the adjacency list for the weighted graph.

For a weighted graph, we add an extra eld in the adjacency list node to denote the weight of
the edge as shown above.

Adding vertex in the adjacency list is easier. It also saves space due to the linked list
implementation. When we need to nd out if there is an edge between one vertex to another,
the operation is not e cient.

Basic Operations For Graphs

Following are the basic operations that we can perform on the graph data structure:

Add a vertex: Adds vertex to the graph.

Add an edge: Adds an edge between the two vertices of a graph.
Display the graph vertices: Display the vertices of a graph.

C++ Graph Implementation Using Adjacency List

Now we present a C++ implementation to demonstrate a simple graph using the adjacency list.

Here we are going to display the adjacency list for a weighted directed graph. We have used
two structures to hold the adjacency list and edges of the graph. The adjacency list is displayed
as (start_vertex, end_vertex, weight).

The C++ program is as follows:

#include <iostream> 
using namespace std;
Home adjacency
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Applications Of Graphs
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Let us discuss some of the applications of graphs.

Graphs are used extensively in computer science to depict network graphs, or semantic
graphs or even to depict the ow of computation.
Graphs are widely used in Compilers to depict allocation of resources to processes or to
indicate data ow analysis, etc.
Graphs are also used for query optimization in database languages in some specialized
compilers.
In social networking sites, graphs are main the structures to depict the network of
people.
Graphs are extensively used to build the transportation system especially the road
network. A popular example is Google maps that extensively uses graphs to indicate
directions all over the world.

Conclusion
A graph is a popular and extensively used data structure which has many applications in the
computer science eld itself apart from other elds. Graphs consist of vertices and edges
connecting two or more vertices.

A graph can be directed or undirected. We can represent graphs using adjacency matrix which is
a linear representation as well as using adjacency linked list. We also discussed the
implementation of the graph in this tutorial.

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