explaingit

jgraph/mxgraph

★ 6,923HTMLAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

TLDR

mxGraph is an end-of-life JavaScript library for drawing interactive flowcharts, org charts, and network diagrams in a web browser using SVG, no plugins required. Development stopped in 2020.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((mxGraph))
    What it does
      Browser diagramming
      SVG rendering
      No plugins needed
    Diagram types
      Flowcharts
      Org charts
      Network maps
    Status
      End of life 2020
      Community forks active
      Underlies draw.io
    Audience
      Web developers
      Enterprise app builders
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Embed an interactive node-and-edge diagram editor into an existing web app using the mxGraph JavaScript API.

USE CASE 2

Render read-only network maps or org charts in a browser without installing any plugins or external tools.

USE CASE 3

Study or fork the codebase that powers draw.io to understand how a production diagramming tool is built.

Tech stack

JavaScriptHTMLSVG

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

No longer maintained, newer browser releases may break functionality, and the library has no TypeScript types out of the box.

No active license information provided in the explanation for current use, check the repository directly.

In plain English

mxGraph is a JavaScript library for drawing diagrams inside a web browser. It renders shapes, connectors, and labels using SVG and HTML, requiring no browser plugins or external dependencies. Developers embed it in a web page and use its API to build interactive diagramming tools: flowcharts, org charts, network maps, or any other node-and-edge style visualization. The library was created in 2005 as a commercial product and sold through 2016. Its original strength was supporting older browsers that did not yet handle SVG well. Once modern browsers made SVG standard, the original company shifted focus to building draw.io (a commercial diagramming application) on top of this codebase. mxGraph was then open-sourced and released to the public. As of November 2020, development on mxGraph has stopped and the repository is effectively end of life. The code is stable and was tested in production at many large organizations, but it will not receive updates. Over time, new browser releases may break parts of it. The maintainers recommend against starting new projects on this codebase and suggest looking at active commercial alternatives such as yFiles or GoJS instead. Community forks exist that continue development independently. There is no official TypeScript support, though a community effort to add type definitions exists separately.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Using mxGraph, create a simple web page with a flowchart that has three boxes connected by arrows and lets me drag nodes to reposition them.
Prompt 2
I need to render a read-only org chart from JSON data using mxGraph. Write the JavaScript to build the graph from an array of employee objects.
Prompt 3
Show me how to export a mxGraph diagram to SVG or PNG so users can download the diagram they created.
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