Mercator Layout

Mercator Layout#

Geographic layout using Mercator projection for latitude/longitude coordinates.

Note

This layout is optional for Graphistry visualization. Graphistry automatically performs server-side geographic layout when latitude/longitude bindings are detected. Use mercator_layout() only when you need projected coordinates locally for analysis or exporting to other tools.

Mercator layout: Convert latitude/longitude coordinates to Mercator projection.

This module provides the mercator_layout method for Plotter objects.

graphistry.layout.mercator.mercator_layout(self, scale_for_graphistry=True)#

Convert latitude/longitude coordinates to Mercator projection.

Uses point_latitude and point_longitude bindings if set, otherwise defaults to ‘latitude’ and ‘longitude’ columns. Uses existing point_x and point_y bindings if available, otherwise defaults to ‘x’ and ‘y’. Uses GPU acceleration via CuPy if available, falls back to CPU/pandas otherwise.

Note: Graphistry automatically performs server-side geographic layout when latitude/longitude columns are detected. Use mercator_layout() when you need projected coordinates locally for analysis or need to export coordinates for use with other tools.

Parameters:

  • scale_for_graphistry (bool) – If True (default), use scaled Earth radius (~637) for manageable coordinate values in Graphistry visualizations. If False, use standard Earth radius (~6,378,137 meters) for accurate geographic coordinates.

  • self (Plottable)

Returns:

Plottable with Mercator projection coordinates

Return type:

Plottable

Example
import graphistry
import pandas as pd

# Using default column names 'latitude' and 'longitude'
nodes_df = pd.DataFrame({
    'id': ['NYC', 'LA', 'London'],
    'latitude': [40.7128, 34.0522, 51.5074],
    'longitude': [-74.0060, -118.2437, -0.1278]
})
g = graphistry.nodes(nodes_df, 'id').mercator_layout()

# Or with custom column names
nodes_df2 = pd.DataFrame({
    'id': ['NYC', 'LA', 'London'],
    'lat': [40.7128, 34.0522, 51.5074],
    'lon': [-74.0060, -118.2437, -0.1278]
})
g2 = (graphistry
      .nodes(nodes_df2, 'id')
      .bind(point_latitude='lat', point_longitude='lon')
      .mercator_layout())

See Also#