When starting on a codebase that has been worked on for some time, it can be handy to try and get an over-arching picture of the system and relationships between the various models.
I recently decided to add this to my own onboarding process steps, which should of course be in addition to actual discussions with your co-workers.
There will inevitably be idiosyncrasies in every codebase that a relational diagram just wont show. And many aspects of an older codebase will only come with time and exposure to the weeds of said codebase.
However, I think an ERD can help in many cases. Although if you’re dealing with a huge monolith, this could end up adding much extra confusion.
This guide uses a third party package: https://github.com/beyondcode/laravel-er-diagram-generator
Please refer to the official README steps on the package’s website/repository. This guide is kind of a braindump as I do the steps.
Note: I branch off in a temporary branch and run these commands
so as to not muddy the main / master
branch.
Install graphviz. On Arch I did this:
sudo pacman -S graphvizInstall in a Laravel project as a dev dependency:
composer require beyondcode/laravel-er-diagram-generator --devGenerate the ERD with default settings (using the
app/Models folder for ERD generation):
php artisan generate:erdThis will give you a file called graph.png in your
current directory, unless you give it a specific name on the end of the
command.
# With a custom name
php artisan generate:erd my-file.png
# With a custom name and different format
php artisan generate:erd my-file.jpg --format=jpg