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Articles / Desktop Programming / Windows Forms

Word Cloud (Tag Cloud) Generator Control for .NET Windows.Forms in C#

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30 Jul 2011CPOL3 min read 216.4K   13.1K   125   49
Generate a word cloud form some input text. A word cloud is a randomly arranged set of words used in your text. The size and the color of each word expresses its usage frequency. Rarely used words are small and pale. The control is clickable and allows to identify a word under mouse.

Image 1

Background

This control is inspired by the free web-based word cloud generator called Wordle. In fact, the control is a screw-out product of my project at http://sourcecodecloud.codeplex.com.

I really loved the visualizations produced by Wordle, but my goal was to write a non web based local solution to process large amounts of sensible data. There were a number of components I found on the web, but most of them had either very pure performance when processing text and the visualization or the layout was not what I expected.

Architecture and usage

There are four phases when visualizing the word cloud:

Processing data like text, HTML, or source code, and extracting the relevant words while ignoring others. As an example, I have implemented three of them. TextExtractor extracts all words from some text string ignoring spaces and all non-letter characters. FileExtractor is able to process large text files line by line. Another one UriExtractor fetches a URL content and tries to clean away HTML tags and JavaScript (to be honest, I just implemented it as a showcase and its filtering capabilities are very pure).

To tap your own data source, just implement the IEnumerable<string> interface or derive from BaseExtractor.

Counting words and ignoring ones from blacklist.

The result is an enumeration with pairs of terms (words) and integers representing the number of occurrences of this word in a text. In the first implementation, I was using KeyValuePair<string, int> to represent them. In this version, I switched to the IWord interface.

C#
public interface IWord : IComparable<IWord>
{
    string Text { get; }
    int Occurrences { get; }
    string GetCaption();
}

I have also moved to LINQ and gave up my own classes for word counting, grouping, and sorting. I loved them very much, but using LINQ increased readability, reduced complexity, and shortened code. All these at the price of an ignorable insignificant performance drawback was really a good deal.

C#
IBlacklist blacklist = new CommonWords();
IProgressIndicator progress = new ProgressBarWrapper(progressBar);
IEnumerable<string> terms = new StringExtractor(textBox.Text, progress);

cloudControl.WeightedWords =
    terms
        .Filter(blacklist)
        .CountOccurences()
        .SortByOccurences();

Layout – I use a QuadTree data structure to create a non overlapping map of words on controls graphics. The same data structure is also used to query control which words are under a certain rectangular area or point. This query is used to redraw only a particular area when needed or perform some action when a control is clicked. Thereby it is very useful to know which word was clicked to perform a word related action, let’s say show statistics or navigate to some URL.

C#
private void cloudControl_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    LayoutItem itemUderMouse;
    Point mousePositionRelativeToControl = 
       cloudControl.PointToClient(new Point(MousePosition.X, MousePosition.Y));
    if (!cloudControl.TryGetItemAtLocation(
             mousePositionRelativeToControl, out itemUderMouse))
    {
        return;
    }
    MessageBox.Show(itemUderMouse.Word);
}

Configuring the Word Cloud Control

There are several things you may vary on this control:

You can change the font type and size.

C#
cloudControl.MinFontSize = 6;
cloudControl.MaxFontSize = 60;
cloudControl.Font = new Font(new FontFamily("Verdana"), 8, FontStyle.Regular); 

Use different colours:

C#
cloudControl.Palette = new Brush[] {Brushes.DarkRed, Brushes.Red, Brushes.LightPink};  

Use a different layout. Currently, there are two layouts implemented. You can implement your own by deriving from BaseLayout or just by implementing the ILayout interface on your own.

C#
cloudControl.LayoutType = LayoutType.Typewriter;

The logic of lay out and drawing graphics is strictly separated by the IGraphicEngine interface. So I think it would not be a big deal to port it to WPF or Silverlight in the future.

For experts

By digging in the code, you will discover the following extra features:

  • Creating your own blacklist - IBlacklist interface or the CommonBlacklist base class.
  • Loading blacklist from file - CommonBlacklist.CreateFromFile(...) method.
  • Grouping words having common stem like - departed, depart, departing.
  • You are even able to see statistics on it.
  • departed.JPG

Credits

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Software Developer
Germany Germany
Tweeter: @gmamaladze
Google+: gmamaladze
Blog: gmamaladze.wordpress.com

Comments and Discussions

 
Questiongenerate png Pin
Member 1039664614-Jun-17 9:51
Member 1039664614-Jun-17 9:51 
AnswerRe: generate png Pin
Member 1486574016-Sep-20 8:13
Member 1486574016-Sep-20 8:13 
Questionnot implemented Pin
kami_jk200219-Dec-16 0:11
kami_jk200219-Dec-16 0:11 
Questiongood Pin
peterkm18-Oct-16 2:06
professionalpeterkm18-Oct-16 2:06 
Questionproblem with length of text Pin
aazam rafiee zade30-Aug-16 7:51
aazam rafiee zade30-Aug-16 7:51 
QuestionPull Request Pin
YouHolli12-Apr-16 3:28
YouHolli12-Apr-16 3:28 
Questioncomment Pin
harsh agrawal7-May-15 3:08
harsh agrawal7-May-15 3:08 
QuestionWordCloud in C# Pin
Member 104974521-Jan-14 1:18
Member 104974521-Jan-14 1:18 
Hi,

I am a student and I've been assigned to do a WordCloud as my major project.

I found this site and downloaded the source code. But it's in Winform.

I would like to know it can run in WPF? What are the codes?

Please I need your help on this. I am a beginner.

Thanks.
Rinesh Kumaran

QuestionDundas Pin
davebenjamin18-Jul-13 0:20
davebenjamin18-Jul-13 0:20 
QuestionMy vote of 5 Pin
dpuser30-Jun-13 21:51
dpuser30-Jun-13 21:51 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
User 691845412-Oct-12 4:42
User 691845412-Oct-12 4:42 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Bed ouin5-Sep-12 23:05
Bed ouin5-Sep-12 23:05 
QuestionGreat Control but I found an error Pin
rapunsel11129-Jan-12 21:31
rapunsel11129-Jan-12 21:31 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Johnny Deese1-Dec-11 11:51
Johnny Deese1-Dec-11 11:51 
Questionsimply excellent Pin
Equinox471118-Oct-11 6:58
Equinox471118-Oct-11 6:58 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
noreply-thephoenixprod13-Sep-11 12:35
noreply-thephoenixprod13-Sep-11 12:35 
QuestionSaving Cloud to file Pin
mswCP24-Aug-11 13:20
mswCP24-Aug-11 13:20 
AnswerRe: Saving Cloud to file Pin
George Mamaladze24-Aug-11 19:42
George Mamaladze24-Aug-11 19:42 
Questionnice Pin
BillW338-Aug-11 3:37
professionalBillW338-Aug-11 3:37 
Questionissue with some word sets Pin
funazonki3-Aug-11 7:23
funazonki3-Aug-11 7:23 
GeneralRe: issue with some word sets Pin
George Mamaladze3-Aug-11 7:57
George Mamaladze3-Aug-11 7:57 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
maq_rohit29-Jul-11 8:40
professionalmaq_rohit29-Jul-11 8:40 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Ranger18521-Aug-12 8:48
Ranger18521-Aug-12 8:48 
QuestionRe: by, and, plural/singual, .. Pin
George Mamaladze26-Jul-11 3:17
George Mamaladze26-Jul-11 3:17 
SuggestionRe: by, and, plural/singual, .. Pin
tassilo26-Jul-11 8:40
tassilo26-Jul-11 8:40 

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