My family of hierarchy nodes now make it possible to work with hierarchies inside Nodebox and turn them into charts and maps. But how do you get the actual data INTO the hierarchy?

The import_hier node is to hierarchies what the import_csv node is to data tables. It takes a single parameter:

• File. Use the file navigator to select an NDBX or OPML file

That's it. If you point to an NDBX file the node will return a hierarchy table showing all the subnetworks (and sub-subnetworks) in the Nodebox file. This is great for revealing the hidden structure of complex Nodebox projects.

OPML files are a widely used format for representing outlines. Many outlining, task, and mind map apps can export OPML files, and many interesting OPML data files are available on the web. I have an iPad app, CarbonFin Outliner, which I've been using for many years; I used it to enter the data for my recent Hogue Genealogy. If you point to an OPML file, the import_hier node will import the file and spit it out as Nodebox-friendly hierarchy data table.

The demo shows a simple example, taken from the web. I use draw_table to show the actual output, but you can just as easily feed it into my hier_chart or hier_map nodes to turn it into a print-ready visualization.

My OPML parser works fine on all the files I've given it so far; if someone out there finds a file which is not parsed correctly please let me know. Also please let me know if there are any other hierarchical file types you would like this node to handle (besides NDBX and OPML files).

There is a whole world of hierarchical data waiting for you to play with in Nodebox. Suck it up!