foliantcontrib.dbdoc 0.1.1

Database documentation generator

Database Documentation Generator for Foliant

This preprocessor generates simple documentation based on the structure of the database. It uses Jinja2 templating engine for customizing the layout and PlantUML for drawing the database scheme.

Currently supported databases:

• PostgreSQL,
• Oracle.

Installation

Prerequisites

DBDoc generates documentation by querying database structure. That's why you will need client libraries installed on your computer before running the preprocessor.

PostgreSQL will be installed automatically with the preprocessor.

But Oracle libraries are proprietary, so we cannot include them even in our Docker distribution. So, if you are planning on using DBDoc to document Oracle databases, first install the Instant Client.

If you search the web, you can find ways to install Oracle Instant Client inside your Docker image, just saying.

Preprocessor

$ pip install foliantcontrib.dbdoc

Config

To enable the preprocessor, add dbdoc to preprocessors section in the project config:

preprocessors:
    - dbdoc

The preprocessor has a number of options:

preprocessors:
    - dbdoc:
        host: localhost
        port: 5432
        dbname: postgres
        user: postgres
        password: ''
        doc: True
        scheme: True
        filters:
            ...
        doc_template: dbdoc.j2
        scheme_template: scheme.j2
        components:
          - tables
          - functions
          - triggers

host : Database host address. Default: localhost

port : Database port. Default: 5432 for pgsql, 1521 for Oracle.

dbname : PostgreSQL database name. Default: postgres for pgsql, orcl for oracle.

user : PostgreSQL user name. Default: postgres for pgsql, hr for oracle.

password : PostgreSQL user password. Default: postgres for pgsq, oracle for oracle.

doc : If true — documentation will be generated. Set to false if you only want to draw a scheme of the database. Default: true

scheme : If true — the platuml code for database scheme will be generated. Default: true

filters : SQL-like operators for filtering the results. More info in the Filters section.

doc_template : Path to jinja-template for documentation. Path is relative to the project directory. If not supplied — default template would be used.

scheme_template : Path to jinja-template for scheme. Path is relative to the project directory. If not supplied — default template would be used.

components : List of components to be added to documentation. If not supplied — everything will be added. Use to exclude some parts of documentation.

Usage

DBDoc currently supports two database engines: Oracle and PostgreSQL. To generate Oracle database documentation, add an <oracle></oracle> tag to a desired place of your chapter.

# Introduction

This document contains the most awesome automatically generated documentation of our marvellous Oracle database.

<oracle></oracle>

To generate PostgreSQL database documentation, add a <pgsql></pgsql> tag to a desired place of your chapter.

# Introduction

This document contains the most awesome automatically generated documentation of our marvellous Oracle database.

<pgsql></pgsql>

Each time the preprocessor encounters one of the mentioned tags, it inserts the whole generated documentation text instead of it. The connection parameters are taken from the config-file.

You can also specify some parameters (or all of them) in the tag options:

# Introduction

Introduction text for database documentation.

<oracle scheme="true"
        doc="false"
        host="11.51.126.8"
        port="1521"
        dbname="mydb"
        user="scott"
        password="tiger">
</oracle>

Tag parameters have the highest priority.

This way you can have documentation for several different databases in one foliant project (even in one md-file if you like it so). It also allows you to put documentation and scheme for you database separately by switching on/off doc and scheme params in tags.

Filters

You can add filters to exclude some tables from the documentation. dbdocs supports several SQL-like filtering operators and a determined list of filtering fields.

You can switch on filters either in foliant.yml file like this:

preprocessors:
  - dbdoc:
    filters:
      eq:
        schema: public
      regex:
        table_name: 'main_.+'

or in tag options using the same yaml-syntax:

<pgsql filters="
  eq:
    schema: public
  regex:
    table_name: 'main_.+'">
</pgsql>

List of currently supported operators:

operator	SQL equivalent	description	value
eq	=	equals	literal
not_eq	!=	does not equal	literal
in	IN	contains	list
not_in	NOT IN	does not contain	list
regex	~, REGEX_LIKE	matches regular expression	literal
not_regex	!~, NOT REGEX_LIKE	does not match regular expression	literal

List of currently supported filtering fields:

field	description
schema	filter by database schema
table_name	filter by database table names

The syntax for using filters in configuration files is following:

filters:
  <operator>:
    <field>: value

If value should be list like for in operator, use YAML-lists instead:

filters:
  in:
    schema:
      - public
      - corp

About Templates

The structure of generated documentation is defined by jinja-templates. You can choose what elements will appear in the documentation, change their positions, add constant text, change layouts and more. Check the Jinja documentation for info on all cool things you can do with templates.

If you don't specify path to templates in the config-file and tag-options dbdoc will use default templates.

If you wish to create your own template, the default ones may be a good starting point.

• Default Oracle doc template.
• Default Oracle scheme template.
• Default PostgreSQL doc template.
• [Default PostgreSQL scheme template.](https://github.com/foliant-docs/foliantcontrib.dbdoc/blob/master/foliant/preprocessors/dbdoc/pgsql
• /templates/doc.j2)