NAME

DBICx::AutoDoc - Generate automatic documentation of DBIx::Class::Schema objects

SYNOPSIS

The recommended way to use this package is with the command-line tool dbicx-autodoc. You should check it's documentation for more details.

  use DBICx:::AutoDoc;
  
  my $ad = DBICx:::AutoDoc->new(
    schema  => 'MyApp::DB',
    output  => '/tmp',
  );
  $ad->fill_template( 'html' );

DESCRIPTION

DBICx::AutoDoc is a utility that can automatically generate documentation for your DBIx::Class schemas. It works by collecting information from several sources and arranging it into a format that makes it easier to deal with from templates.

CONFIGURATION METHODS

new( %configuration )

Create a new DBICx::AutoDoc object. Most of the methods below can also be passed to the constructor as configuration options. Which means that these two techniques are identical:

  # pass options to constructor
  my $ad = DBICx::AutoDoc->new( schema => 'MyApp::DB' );
  
  # create object, then configure it
  my $ad = DBICx::AutoDoc->new();
  $ad->schema( 'MyApp::DB' );

schema( $schema );

Retrieve or set the class name of the DBIx::Class::Schema class you want to document.

output( $directory );

Retrieve or change the directory where the generated documentation will be placed. This directory will be created for you if it doesn't exist. The default is to put the output files in the current directory.

connect( $true_or_false);

The connect method allows you to specify whether an attempt will be made to connect to the actual database. If given a false value (the default) the documentation will be generated from only the code of your packages. If true, then $schema-connect> will be called before the documentation process begins (which means you may also have to set the "dsn", "user" and/or "pass" options.)

The default is not to attempt to connect, which gives you documentation of the classes, rather than the database itself.

Note that there are several parts of the documentation which may change, depending on whether you are connected or not, as some parts of your code may get modified by the database. As an example, when deploying to a PostgreSQL database, you might specify the data_type for your columns as 'varchar', but if you use the "connect" option, then the value reported by the database will probably be 'character varying' instead.

dsn( $dsn );

Retrieve or change the DSN for the database. Might be included in the documenation (some templates display this value, some don't) but if "connect" is false, then it won't be used for anything other than displaying in the documentation.

user( $username );

Get or set the username used to connect to the database. Ignored if "connect" is false.

pass( $password );

Get or set the password used to connect to the database. Ignored if "connect" is false.

include_path( $scalar_or_array_ref );

Get or set the value passed to Template's INCLUDE_PATH option. Unless you are making your own templates, you probably don't need to change this.

The default is to look in the DBICx::AutoDoc 'auto' directory, which is where they get installed by Module::Install, and if not found there, to look in $FindBin::Bin/templates, which allows you to use the dbicx-autodoc tool from an uninstalled copy of the package.

METHODS

filename_base

Returns a base filename for the output files. By default this is based on the class name and version number of your schema. For example, if you schema looks like this:

  package MyApp::DB::Schema;
  use base qw( DBIx::Class::Schema );
  our $VERSION = 42;

Then filename_base will return 'MyApp-DB-Schema-42'.

When a template is processed, the extension for the template is appended to the output from this method to determine the output filename.

output_filename( $extension );

Given an extension, this method returns the filename that should be used for storing the output of the template associated with that extension. For example, using the previous example schema, if output_filename( 'html' ) is called, it would return 'MyApp-DB-Schema-42.html'. When processing a template, this filename will be created in the directory specified by the "output" option.

fill_template( $extension );

The fill_template method takes an argument of the file extension (which is also the template name) and renders that template into an appropriately named file in the output directory.

fill_templates( @templates );

This is simply a convenience method that calls fill_template for each of the templates indicated.

fill_all_templates

Calling the fill_all_templates method is simply a convenience wrapper that calls "list_templates" to determine what templates are available, and then calls "fill_template" for each one in turn, thereby generating all the possible documentation for your schema.

list_templates

Returns a list of all the templates that are found in the "include_path". Names from this list can be passed to "fill_template" to genrate that documentation.

INTERNAL METHODS

These methods are generally used only internally, but are documented for completeness.

byname

A sort routine for sorting an array of hashrefs by the 'name' key.

default_include_path

A class method that calculates and returns the default value for the include_path.

TEMPLATES

The templates used by this module are processed with the Template package. The template filename is the extension the output file should have, with a .tt2 extension of it's own. Only templates in the top level of directories in the template search path will be turned into documentation files, subcomponents used by the top-level templates can be placed in subdirectories without worrying about whether their extensions conflict or not.

INCLUDED TEMPLATES

Templates included with the distribution are:

html

Generates an html page that documents each classes table name, column information, keys and relationships.

dot

Generates a .dot file which can be used by GraphViz to generate a diagram of the relationships between the classes. In order to get a graphic from the dot file, you need to run one of the graphing commands from the GraphViz package (I recommend 'fdp'), something like this:

  fdp -Tpng -o MyApp-DB-Schema-42.png MyApp-DB-Schema-42.dot

dot_post

This template doesn't actually produce any output itself, instead it runs fdp for you to produce .png and .imap files from your .dot source.

dump

This is a very simple template that just gets the generated data structure dumped using Data::Dump. The output is useful if you are creating your own templates, as you can use it to see what data has been collected from your schema, but if you are not creating templates then it isn't all that valuable.

KNOWN BUGS / LIMITATIONS

These are the known bugs and/or limitations in the current version of this package.

Not Windows compatible?

There are probably some windows-incompatibilities in the code, I've tried to keep everything portable, but I'd be surprised if it works on Windows on the first try. Patches welcome.

Having problems with GraphViz and fonts?

If you get an error from fdp that says something like:

  Error: Could not find/open font : Times-Roman

Then you probably need to do the following:

Locate a truetype font on your system to use (or download one)

  [jason@critter ~ 0]$ locate .ttf
  ...
  /Library/Fonts/Arial.ttf
  ...

Add a -Gfontpath option with the directory to the font

  fdp -Gfontpath="/Library/Fonts" (other options from above)

Add fontname options for the Graph as well as for Nodes and Edges

  -Gfontname=Arial -Nfontname=Arial -Efontname=Arial

So your final command line looks something like this:

  fdp -Gfontpath=/Library/Fonts -Gfontname=Arial \
    -Nfontname=Arial -Efontname=Arial

Then use this value as the c<--graphviz-command> option to dbicx-autodoc, or as the graphviz_command option to DBICx::AutoDoc.

  % dbicx-autodoc --schema=MyApp::DB --graphviz-command='fdp \
    -Gfontpath=/Library/Fonts -Gfontname=Arial -Nfontname=Arial \
    -Efontname=Arial' --output=./docs

SEE ALSO

dbicx-autodoc, DBICx::AutoDoc, DBIx::Class, DBIx::Class::Schema, Template

AUTHOR

Jason Kohles, <email@jasonkohles.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2007 by Jason Kohles

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

cpanm DBICx::AutoDoc

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install DBICx::AutoDoc