SocialNetwork

SocialNetwork represents relations between A gents. It is a set of pairs (connection, weight), where connection is an A gent and weight is a number storing the relation's strength.

This type is used to create relations from scratch to be used by Agent:addSocialNetwork(). To create well-established SocialNetworks see Society:createSocialNetwork(). It is recommended that a SocialNetwork should contain only Agents that belong to the same Society, as it guarantees that all its Agents have unique identifiers. Calling forEachConnection() from an Agent traverses one of its SocialNetworks.

Attributes

Some attributes of SocialNetwork have internal semantics. They can be used as read-only by the modeler.

  • connections: The connections with the Agents of the SocialNetWork.
  • count: The number of Agents in the SocialNetwork.
  • weights: The weights of the Agents in the SocialNetwork.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
sn = SocialNetwork{}

See also

Functions
add Add a new connection to the SocialNetwork.
clear Remove all Agents from the SocialNetwork.
getWeight Return a number with the weight of a given connection.
isConnection Return whether a given Agent belongs to the SocialNetwork.
isEmpty Return whether the SocialNetwork does not contain any Agent.
remove Remove an Agent from the SocialNetwork.
sample Return a random Agent from the SocialNetwork.
setWeight Update the weight of a connection.
# Retrieve the number of connections in the SocialNetwork.

add

Add a new connection to the SocialNetwork.

Arguments

  • #1: An Agent.
  • #2: A number representing the weight of the connection). The default value is 1.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent1 = Agent{id = "1"}
agent2 = Agent{id = "2"}

sn:add(agent1)
sn:add(agent2, 0.5)
print(#sn)

clear

Remove all Agents from the SocialNetwork. In practice, it has the same behavior of calling SocialNetwork() again if the SocialNetwork was not added to any Agent.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent1 = Agent{id = "1"}
agent2 = Agent{id = "2"}

sn:add(agent1)
sn:add(agent2)

sn:clear()
print(#sn)

getWeight

Return a number with the weight of a given connection.

Arguments

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent1 = Agent{id = "1"}
agent2 = Agent{id = "2"}

sn:add(agent1)
sn:add(agent2, 0.5)

print(sn:getWeight(agent1))
print(sn:getWeight(agent2))

isConnection

Return whether a given Agent belongs to the SocialNetwork.

Arguments

  • #1: An Agent.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent = Agent{id = "1"}

sn:add(agent)

if sn:isConnection(agent) then
    print("connected")
end

isEmpty

Return whether the SocialNetwork does not contain any Agent.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()

if sn:isEmpty() then
    print("empty")
end

remove

Remove an Agent from the SocialNetwork.

Arguments

  • #1: An Agent.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent1 = Agent{id = "1"}
agent2 = Agent{id = "2"}

sn:add(agent1)
sn:add(agent2)

sn:remove(agent1)
print(#sn)

sample

Return a random Agent from the SocialNetwork.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent1 = Agent{id = "1"}
agent2 = Agent{id = "2"}

sn:add(agent1)
sn:add(agent2)

agent = sn:sample()

setWeight

Update the weight of a connection.

Arguments

  • #1: An Agent.
  • #2: A number with the new weight.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
agent1 = Agent{id = "1"}
agent2 = Agent{id = "2"}

sn:add(agent1)
sn:add(agent2, 0.5)
sn:setWeight(agent1, 0.001)

print(sn:getWeight(agent1))

#

Retrieve the number of connections in the SocialNetwork.

Usage

sn = SocialNetwork()
print(#sn)