Genex v1.0.1-beta Genex.Visualizer behaviour View Source

Behaviour for implementing visualizations.

A visualizer provides robust visualization for your genetic algorithms. A complete visualizer behaviour implements two functions: init/1 and display/2.

The visualizer behaviour also implements String.Chars for both Chromosome and Population. You can override these defualt implementations in your visualizer module.

The options passed to your visualizer is a Keyword list that is the same as the initial options passed to run/1. You can specify any required options in your own visualizer module.

Example Implementation

The following is a basic correct implementation of a Genex visualizer.

defmodule MyVisualizer do
  use Genex.Visualizer

  def init(_) do
    IO.write("Beginning Algorithm...")
    :ok
  end

  def display(population), do: IO.inspect(population)
end

Link to this section Summary

Callbacks

display(population, opt)

Displays a summary of the population.

init(opt)

Initializes the visualizer with opts.

Link to this section Callbacks

display(population, opt)

display(population :: Genex.Types.Population.t(), opt :: options()) :: any()

Displays a summary of the population.

This function takes a %Population{} and returns any value representing a visualization of the population. Typically, this is a summary of the population during the current generation. By default, display/2 is called at the beginning of every new generation.

init(opt)

init(opt :: options()) :: {:error, String.t()} | :ok

Initializes the visualizer with opts.

The purpose of this function is to do any initial setup of your visualizer. For example, in the Text visualizer, init/1 is responsible for outputting the initial table layout. You can do anything you want in init/1, so long as it returns :ok.