Because yFiles.NET and yFiles FLEX use a very similar architecture for rendering the visual representation of graph items, they use the same GraphML extension format. Therefore, communicating with a yFiles.NET server should work out-of-the-box for most yFiles FLEX usecases.

To read/write the yFiles.NET/yFiles FLEX GraphML extension format, either a default RoundtripHandler or a DotnetCompatGraphMLIOHandler can be used. See Chapter 3, Input and Output for details on configuration of the client's I/O mechanism and Chapter 4, Communicating with the Server for configuration of server communication features on the client.

Note that although yFiles FLEX and yFiles.NET use the same GraphML extension format, both libraries are distinct products. Therefore, there could be some features that are implemented in only one of the libraries. If, for example, a certain style implementation is available only in yFiles.NET, but has not been implemented for the client library, the style will not be parsed and displayed on the client.

The following table provides an overview of the style implementations available in yFiles FLEX and yFiles.NET.

(*) The yFiles.NET ImageNodeStyle corresponds to the yFiles FLEX BitmapNodeStyle.

The following table provides an overview of the label model implementations available in yFiles FLEX and yFiles.NET.

The XML Data of a serialized custom style that is only available on the client will not be lost when a full server roundtrip is performed. For details on manipulating custom yFiles FLEX styles on the server, please see the section called “XML Styles”.