|
|
- <iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DoDaHmyIPvQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
-
- ### Links
-
- - [GitHub](https://github.com/jrtechs/SteamFriendsGraph)
- - [Live Site](http://steam.jrtechs.net/)
-
- ### Project Description
-
- This project utilizes the steam API and graph databases to create friend graphs for clients in a
- web browser. Currently there are two types of graphs available:
- - Friends of Friends Graph:
- This graph displays all the steam friends of a single person and all their friend’s friends.
- - Common Friends Graph:
- This graph will only display your friends; however, it will draw edges between your friends’ if
- they are friends with each other.
-
- ### Motivation
-
- While learning about graph databases I thought that it would be awesome to create a massive graph
- database with steam friends in it. After a quick google search, I realized that some other people have
- done similar things in python, however, nobody has ever made a live website do this. Using my prior
- knowledge of the steam API and new knowledge of gremlin, Hadoop and HBase, I figured that this would
- be a great weekend project. Although I got most of the functionality done in the first weekend, I
- ended up working on it for 3 weekends hammering out all the edges. After ample work, I am satisfied with
- the appearance and functionality of the website, but, I am looking forward to making some improvements
- in the future.
-
-
- 
-
- ### Technical Details
-
- At the core of this project there is a java backend and a JavaScript frontend. I needed a backend for
- this project because you cannot distribute your steam API key, plus, this allows me to cache everything
- in a local graph database. The second time a player is queried, it is extremely fast since all the steam
- friends are cached in a local
- [gremlin](http://tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/3.0.1-incubating/) server.
- The only time-consuming operation that the backend must carry out is querying the steam API; querying the
- gremlin server is relatively fast.
- On the front end I used [Sigma-JS](http://sigmajs.org/) with a web socket to render the steam graph.
- Since creating a new graph on the back end can take up to 5 minutes (if the player has not been indexed),
- I continuously send new nodes to
- the client as they arrive from the steam API. This prevents the client from staring at a loading bar
- for 5 minutes; plus, it makes great time lapse videos. The only drawback to this is that you cannot
- start applying a force to shake the graph until all the nodes are added to the graph.
-
- 
-
- ### Uses of Friends Graph Data Base
-
- There are tons of [academic papers](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/ch10.pdf)
- written on the usages of friends’ graphs. What you may be able to do with friends
- graph may shock you. A popular use of friends’ graphs is to view friends’ clusters. Facebook may be able
- to identify someone's family, friends, and work groups by simply using their friend’s information. When looking
- at steam friends graphs I could identify some people's high school and college friend’s groups. Another
- famous example would be for friends’ identification; If a ton of people in your friends list are also
- friends with a person, it is likely that they would also know that person. This is how
- websites like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook recommend people for you to follow. Similarly, you can
- use this to identify people’s best friends. If two people share a ton of friends, it is
- more likely that they will be good friends vs the person which they only share one friend with.
-
- Simple analysis of graphs like this may seem benign. However, there are tremendous implications when it
- comes to privacy and advertising. If websites chose to, they can harvest a ton of data and start
- recommending you products based on not just what you like, but what your friends also like. Steam
- already does this to a certain extent when they recommend you games that are popular among friends.
-
- 
-
- ### Hosting the Project
-
- Hosting the front end of this project is easy, it is just thrown on an apache server. The backend
- is trickier since it needs to run both a java app and a gremlin server. Currently I am hosting this
- project on an Ubuntu VM with 4gb ram. At idle this project only takes 1gb of ram, however, under heavy
- loads it uses around 2 GB of ram and saturates my CPU.
-
- 
-
- ### Future Plans for the Project
-
- In the future I would love to add more graphs to this website. Instead of just displaying graphs it would
- also be cool to create pages which tries to identify friends’ groups, people you may know, and best
- friends. There is a ton of game information available on the steam API, it might be neat to make
- graphs based on friends who play the same games.
|
