How do I generate UML diagram based on existing classes in PHP?
This question is related to
php
uml
class-diagram
If you are looking to generate UML easily from your existing PHP Classes you might want to consider PHPStorm 3.0 IDE. It does a good job of replicating existing code into UML.
Have a look at the PHP Storm feature list.
Well to be honest, first and foremost you shouldn't generate UML model from code, but code from UML model ;).
Even if you are in a rare situation, when you need to do this reverse engineering, it is generally suggested that you do it by hand or at least tidy-up the diagrams, as auto-generated UML has really poor visual (=information) value most of the time.
If you just need to generate the diagrams, it's probably a good thing to ask yourself why exactly? Who is the intended audience and what is the goal? What does the auto-generated diagram have to offer, what code doesn't?
Basicly I accept only one answer to that question. It just got too big and incomprehensible.
Which again is a reason to start with UML in the first place, as opposed to start coding ;) It's called analysis and it's on decline, because every second guy in business thinks it's a bit too expensive and not really necessary.
Have you tried Autodia yet? Last time I tried it it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.
If you are looking to generate UML easily from your existing PHP Classes you might want to consider PHPStorm 3.0 IDE. It does a good job of replicating existing code into UML.
Have a look at the PHP Storm feature list.
Have you tried Autodia yet? Last time I tried it it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.
There's also the PHP UML tool available from pear.
PHP_UML:
Install it on the command line via:
$ pear install pear/php_uml
(This used to be $ pear install pear/php_uml-alpha
but the package has since gone stable.)
Generate your xmi:
$ phpuml -o project.xmi
I strongly recommend BOUML which:
In theory you can use PhpStorm to visualise your classes using UML. The generation is not really great but you can effectively refactor stuff and again, at least preview parents, implementations, constants, attributes, methods and their visibility in a nice way.
Situation
I want to visualise a communication between already existing components to a colleague.
Process using PHPStorm
https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2017/09/uml-diagrams-in-phpstorm-2017-2/
Advantages
Disadvantages
Result
Anyway, after some painful hour of work I was only able to generate unrelated boxes and had to use additional program to link relations. Really bad. But I believe once they make it work properly it will be a great feature because as the code changes, the diagrams would be automatically updated!
For now, don't use PhpStorm for UML diagrams.
You can use Visual Paradigm for UML. This might not be the best paid (it's US$699) product, just as an option if anyone would like to try. It can create class diagram from PHP and vice versa, and not only PHP, there's a bunch of language you can choose such as C#, C++, Ruby, Java, VB.NET, Python, Objective C, Perl, etc. There's also a trial you can check on.
Have you tried Autodia yet? Last time I tried it it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.
In theory you can use PhpStorm to visualise your classes using UML. The generation is not really great but you can effectively refactor stuff and again, at least preview parents, implementations, constants, attributes, methods and their visibility in a nice way.
Situation
I want to visualise a communication between already existing components to a colleague.
Process using PHPStorm
https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2017/09/uml-diagrams-in-phpstorm-2017-2/
Advantages
Disadvantages
Result
Anyway, after some painful hour of work I was only able to generate unrelated boxes and had to use additional program to link relations. Really bad. But I believe once they make it work properly it will be a great feature because as the code changes, the diagrams would be automatically updated!
For now, don't use PhpStorm for UML diagrams.
the best (Windows) software i have found to do PHP and UML is Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. besides a pletora of features, it supports the following for PHP:
not free ($199), but definitely worth the money.
There's also php2xmi. You have to do a bit of manual work, but it generates all the classes, so all you have to do is to drag them into a classdiagram in Umbrello.
Otherwise, generating a diagram with the use of reflection and graphviz, is fairly simple. I have a snippet over here, that you can use as a starting point.
Here's how I did it (directly from code to PDF drawing without manual drawing of anything):
Here's an example of suitable command line for using fdp to output PDF diagram (assuming that dot file generated by argouml-graphviz XLST processing is saved as xmi-model.dot):
fdp -Tpdf -Gmaxiter=1000 -Gmindist=0.5 -Gpackmode=node \
-Eweight=0.05 -Elen=1.0 -Eminlen=1.0 -Gsplines=true \
-Goverlap=false xmi-model.dot -oxmi-model.pdf
As an alternative you could try PHP_UML or php2xmi instead of BOUML for doing the "reverse engineering" part. I haven't yet tried that.
(I'm using the phrase "reverse engineering" because it seems that UML people are using those words when they mean extracting class and method information from the source code. I would personally interpret those words as extracting information from executable binary file or captured raw wire data.)
If you prefer drawing the class diagram by hand (instead of using computer to do all the drawing), you can use either BOUML or ArgoUML for the drawing. Using the "reverse engineered" data via BOUML will help in that case.
You can use Visual Paradigm for UML. This might not be the best paid (it's US$699) product, just as an option if anyone would like to try. It can create class diagram from PHP and vice versa, and not only PHP, there's a bunch of language you can choose such as C#, C++, Ruby, Java, VB.NET, Python, Objective C, Perl, etc. There's also a trial you can check on.
There's also the PHP UML tool available from pear.
PHP_UML:
Install it on the command line via:
$ pear install pear/php_uml
(This used to be $ pear install pear/php_uml-alpha
but the package has since gone stable.)
Generate your xmi:
$ phpuml -o project.xmi
phUML is fully automatic UML class diagramm generator written in PHP, licensed under the BSD license. It is capable of parsing any PHP5 object oriented source code and create an appropriate image representation of the oo structure based on the UML specification.
./phuml -r /var/www/my_project -graphviz -createAssociations false -neato out.png
I strongly recommend BOUML which:
There's also php2xmi. You have to do a bit of manual work, but it generates all the classes, so all you have to do is to drag them into a classdiagram in Umbrello.
Otherwise, generating a diagram with the use of reflection and graphviz, is fairly simple. I have a snippet over here, that you can use as a starting point.
Here's how I did it (directly from code to PDF drawing without manual drawing of anything):
Here's an example of suitable command line for using fdp to output PDF diagram (assuming that dot file generated by argouml-graphviz XLST processing is saved as xmi-model.dot):
fdp -Tpdf -Gmaxiter=1000 -Gmindist=0.5 -Gpackmode=node \
-Eweight=0.05 -Elen=1.0 -Eminlen=1.0 -Gsplines=true \
-Goverlap=false xmi-model.dot -oxmi-model.pdf
As an alternative you could try PHP_UML or php2xmi instead of BOUML for doing the "reverse engineering" part. I haven't yet tried that.
(I'm using the phrase "reverse engineering" because it seems that UML people are using those words when they mean extracting class and method information from the source code. I would personally interpret those words as extracting information from executable binary file or captured raw wire data.)
If you prefer drawing the class diagram by hand (instead of using computer to do all the drawing), you can use either BOUML or ArgoUML for the drawing. Using the "reverse engineered" data via BOUML will help in that case.
Well to be honest, first and foremost you shouldn't generate UML model from code, but code from UML model ;).
Even if you are in a rare situation, when you need to do this reverse engineering, it is generally suggested that you do it by hand or at least tidy-up the diagrams, as auto-generated UML has really poor visual (=information) value most of the time.
If you just need to generate the diagrams, it's probably a good thing to ask yourself why exactly? Who is the intended audience and what is the goal? What does the auto-generated diagram have to offer, what code doesn't?
Basicly I accept only one answer to that question. It just got too big and incomprehensible.
Which again is a reason to start with UML in the first place, as opposed to start coding ;) It's called analysis and it's on decline, because every second guy in business thinks it's a bit too expensive and not really necessary.
the best (Windows) software i have found to do PHP and UML is Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. besides a pletora of features, it supports the following for PHP:
not free ($199), but definitely worth the money.
Have you tried Autodia yet? Last time I tried it it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.
phUML is fully automatic UML class diagramm generator written in PHP, licensed under the BSD license. It is capable of parsing any PHP5 object oriented source code and create an appropriate image representation of the oo structure based on the UML specification.
./phuml -r /var/www/my_project -graphviz -createAssociations false -neato out.png
Source: Stackoverflow.com