The documentation scared me a little when it warned that the syntax is “not really HTML,” but then they made up for it by providing a formal grammar of exactly what is accepted. There are three main types of shapes : polygon-based, record-based and user-defined. HTML-ishĪ relatively recent addition to Graphviz (circa 2003!) is the “HTML-Like Label.” This carefully-named feature lets you specify node appearance using familiar HTML syntax, with the addition of named ports where you can connect arrows. I fiddled with a few examples from the gallery, read through some documentation, and finally found just the ticket. I was familiar with its flowchart-like diagrams of bubbles, boxes, and diamonds, but I thought I’d check to see if it could be coaxed into producing connected tables. Even if you haven’t used it directly, you’ve probably seen Graphviz output before, perhaps in an academic paper or a database entity relationship diagram.
Graphviz is a collection of utilities and libraries for generating diagrams from a language called DOT. Graphviz is a collection of utilities and libraries for generating diagrams from a language called DOT. I intended to check these files into source control, so they needed to diff and merge nicely.ĭo any tools come to mind? I searched around for a while before dusting off an old one: Graphviz 00-readme.php: Example from graphviz README 01-basic.php: Basic styling of nodes 02-table.
#Graphviz table software
Specifically, I was documenting how a software system accepts data from a third party, mapping fields from external records to an internal message type:īasically, I wanted to draw arrows between rows of tables. When I came up short, I used a very old tool instead. I recently found myself looking for a modern tool to diagram relationships between tables of data.