Interactive ERD viewer

Open a saved document with:

laranex-schema-viewer serve --snapshot schema-viewer.json

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8765. serve shows the shared Laranex Schema Viewer UI (laranex-schema-viewer-ui), the same viewer the Laravel package uses. It is packaged prebuilt in the Python package, so no Node.js or frontend build is needed at runtime, and it loads nothing from outside the local server.

serve is the one exception to authentication in development: it has none, and is meant for a single developer on their own machine. Never share it. It listens on loopback only; to open it from anywhere else, keep it on loopback behind an authenticated HTTPS reverse proxy or an access-controlled tunnel (serve). The viewer is a development tool: never expose it in production. If you serve it or a document any other way, protect the page, every asset, the document and every download server-side, as the security policy describes.

The viewer reads laranex-schema 2.x documents: declared (build), database (build --source database) and combined (build --source combined). The packaged build is laranex-schema-viewer-ui 0.4.0, from the npm tarball pinned (with its SHA-512) in ui.lock.json. A file of another format or version stops serve with an error asking for a rebuild.

Explore the diagram

• Drag table cards (Shift-click several to move them together), pan, zoom, fit, and arrange the layout again.
• Search tables, columns, models and relationships; browse tables, relationships or columns in the side panel.
• Select a table for its columns, primary key, indexes (unique, composite, partial with predicate, expression, method, included columns), constraints, foreign keys in both directions, ORM relationships and models.
• Focus a table's neighbors to a chosen depth; the selection is kept in the URL.
• Switch light/dark themes (remembered), and open the Download dialog (E; see downloads).
• On a phone-width screen the side panel becomes a bottom sheet.

Foreign keys and ORM relationships

Foreign-key constraints and declared ORM relationships stay separate on the diagram, in the legend and in the details. A link is drawn as a foreign key, as an ORM relationship with no constraint behind it, or as both when a relationship matches a constraint. Relationships through other tables are drawn separately. The Relationships toolbar menu shows or hides each kind. Selecting a link explains what it is.

Self references and composite foreign keys keep their column pairs. Relationship cardinality describes mapped behavior; it is not a database uniqueness guarantee.

Several connections

A document built from several database connections (see database introspection) holds one connection per name, each with its own driver:

• All connections (the default): each connection is laid out on its own inside a labelled frame showing its name, driver, table count and diagnostic count, so a users table on two connections is drawn twice, never merged. Relationships between connections run between the frames. A frame grows to contain a table dragged out of it.
• One connection: pick it in the header's Connection menu (on a phone, in the ⋯ menu), or step through all connections and each connection with [ and ]. Tables on other connections that the shown tables' relationships reach stay on the diagram as dashed reference nodes marked On connection NAME · driver. They cannot be moved or folded; clicking one opens that table on its own connection.
• Every table label names its connection, for example analytics · users: on cards, in Browse, search results, Details headings, edge details, the phone sheet and image exports.
• A relationship between two connections is always drawn as an ORM relationship with no constraint (dashed), marked cross-connection. Foreign keys never cross connections.
• Deep links: #connection=<id> opens one connection (an unknown id opens all of them), and #table=<id> opens that table, also on its own connection when #connection= names another one. Connection ids look like connection:analytics; table ids are opaque and qualified by connection.
• Coverage is listed per connection, and drift and reconciliation diagnostics name their connection.

Known limitations of the shared viewer (laranex-schema-viewer-ui 0.4.0):

• A frame grows to contain a table dragged out of it but does not push other frames away, so frames can overlap. Arrange again lays out the tables and their frames afresh.
• Unfolding a card keeps every position, so a taller card can overlap the one below it. Dragged positions are not remembered across reloads (only the theme is).
• There is no dense mode for very large schemas: every line keeps its full weight.

What each source shows

The Details tab, with nothing selected, shows the document's source as a badge with a sentence about what it means, the legend, and a Coverage section per connection: whether the declared metadata and the database inspection are complete, and which features were only partly read or unavailable.

• declared: ORM metadata only, no database was inspected. Foreign keys are declared ones.
• database: database introspection only, with no models or ORM relationships.
• combined: the database is authoritative where it was inspected, enriched with models and relationships from the ORM. Coverage lists both the database and the declared side.

In a combined document the viewer also shows where the two sides disagree:

• Provenance badges: tables, columns, indexes, foreign keys and constraints found on one side only are marked declared only or database only. Declared-only tables, columns and foreign-key lines are drawn in the declared color.
• Drift: columns that differ between the two sides (for example in type, nullability or default) are tinted on the diagram and in the columns table, with a drift list giving the database and declared values. Indexes, foreign keys and tables carry their own drift lists.
• Diagnostics: the tab count, per-table issue counts and the Diagnostics tab list every diagnostic. Confirmed facts are kept apart from heuristics (comparisons that rely on normalized type names or SQL text), and a diagnostic about a table links to it.

Comparisons, migrations and inferred associations

• Compare: when the document stores schema comparisons, the Compare tab shows one baseline → target pair at a time: the summary, every listed difference with its baseline and target values side by side, filters by object, change, severity and certainty, and a prominent note when the comparison is incomplete. Show in baseline/target opens the difference's table, and the diagram can mark the differences on table cards. The view is kept in the URL: #view=compare&comparison=<id>&difference=<id>.
• Migrations: each stored migration track's revision status, kept apart from schema drift.
• Inferred associations: foreign-key edges an inferred association uses are annotated as inferred; nothing is drawn that the document does not link.

This package stores comparisons; it writes migration tracks and inferred associations empty, so those two views show only documents from other producers.

Downloads

The Download dialog (E, or the phone's ⋯ menu) offers:

• Schema files of one connection, with a preview and conversion warnings: JSON (a laranex-schema 2.0 document of that connection), DBML, Mermaid and Markdown.
• Diagram images: SVG and PNG of the whole diagram or what is on screen.
• This page as HTML (schema-viewer.html): the viewer with the whole document embedded, which opens in any browser from a file, offline.
• The whole document as served (schema-viewer.json).

Every download made from a private schema is as sensitive as the document itself: each one shows table, column, index and relationship names, and the HTML page and JSON files hold the complete metadata. Never commit them, attach them to public issues, or publish them; share them only with people who may see the schema.

Responsibility: Laranex Schema Viewer provides safe defaults, protects the documents it generates (a loopback-only server, no-store responses) and serves the viewer securely. Once you intentionally download or export a standalone file (offline HTML, JSON, DBML, Markdown, Mermaid, SVG or PNG), storing, sharing and distributing it is the responsibility of you and the repository owner; the package does not track or control such files. scan detects JSON and HTML downloads by content, but not SVG, PNG, DBML, Mermaid or Markdown (limitations). The software is provided "as is", under the MIT license.

Current boundaries

The viewer is read-only. It does not edit schemas, persist layouts, connect to a database or generate migrations. Rebuild the document when models or the database change.

Try the interactive demo.