erd-dotnet

This utility translates a plain text description of a relational database schema to a graphical entity-relationship diagram. The visualization is produced by using Dot with GraphViz. The output graph is a png image.

Here is an example of the output:

Installation

erd-dotnet requires:

• GraphViz
• .Net 8 Runtime

All of these are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Dot must be in your path.

Usage

erd-dotnet INPUTFILE OUTPUTFILE [OPTION]

Where:

• INPUTFILE is the path of a text file (.er format)
• OUTPUTFILE is the path of the output file (.png or .txt)

Options: -f, --format TXT The output is a text file (dot format)

By default, the output will be a png file. This requires Dot to be installed.

Alternatively you can use the text option and use an online tool: Copy and paste the contents of the .dot file into an online graphviz viewer

Quick example of a .er file

[Person]
*name
height
weight
birth
+location_id

Build instruction

You need .net 7 SDK.

Build:

dotnet build

Run:

dotnet run

Credit

This work is based on the work of:

• https://github.com/BurntSushi/erd
• https://github.com/kaishuu0123/erd-go