[HN Gopher] Diagram as Code
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Diagram as Code
Author : delduca
Score : 138 points
Date : 2020-05-12 15:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (diagrams.mingrammer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (diagrams.mingrammer.com)
| kovek wrote:
| This is cool! I was hoping it would look something like:
|
| ''' import diagrams calc_d =
| diagrams.new_diagram("calculator_123")
|
| calc_d.Datum("SuperNumber") class SuperNumber(int): pass
|
| @calc_d.Service("Calculator", "takes numbers and operations and
| operates") class Calculator(object): @calc_d.Endpoint("Add",
| calls=["Increment"], main_data={"b": "SuperNumber}) def add(self,
| a, b: SuperNumber): out = a for i in range(b):
| calc_d.multi(calls=["Increment"]) out = self.increment(out)
| @calc_d.Function("Increment") def increment(self, a):
| return a+1
|
| def integration_test(): calc_d.instantiate("Calculator") calc =
| Calculator() ... '''
|
| EDIT: Dear dang and YC Hacker News, I would love to create code
| blocks using surrounding triple quotes..
| samsquire wrote:
| I've got a similar project which takes a diagram of your
| infrastructure, such as [1] and runs the diagram to build your
| devops infrastructure [2].
|
| [1]: http://devops-pipeline.com/architecture.tb.png [2]:
| http://devops-pipeline.com/
| 2fast4you wrote:
| Sent this to a few people at work and it spread pretty quickly.
| We all love it!
| nautilus12 wrote:
| When I first read this I thought this did the inverse of what it
| actually does. Let you interactively draw out diagrams then it
| would generate the boilerplate code to achieve that diagram.
| hinkley wrote:
| If we had a decent diff tool for visual elements, then a whole
| lot of tools would be practical, including the one you suggest.
|
| Certainly a lot of the building blocks for such a system now
| exist.
| maitredusoi wrote:
| I have the exact seem disappointment ;(. As we evolve towards a
| world were low code will become a part of everday tools,
| diagram generating code is to me a good answer, at least on a
| scaffolding level...
| jameskraus wrote:
| I was hoping this tool would support directionality/sequencing of
| nodes.
|
| A tool I've used in the past is SequenceDiagram.org for
| diagraming a sequence of service calls. While a bit old-school,
| it's good for its purpose.
|
| I've also used Whimsical[0] to model flows and graph-like
| relationships. It's got the added benefit of allowing multiple
| users to view and edit the same document. Whimsical is still my
| favorite tool right now due to flexibility, but it's a closed-
| source/paid product, so I'm open to alternatives.
|
| [0] https://whimsical.com/
| dorian-graph wrote:
| What about mermaid-js? Here's a sequence diagram example:
| https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid-live-editor/#/edit/eyJj...
| camillovisini wrote:
| Visually Whimsical looks absolutely stunning... Wow
| the_arun wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! This is really cool.
| mugsie wrote:
| I like this a lot - trying to store diagrams that look good,
| without sticking a visio file into a git repo is something I keep
| an eye out for.
| hugozap wrote:
| You may also find value in diagram.codes (I'm the author)
|
| It's focused on non technical users so the syntax will always
| be very simple (at the cost of flexibility but that's on
| purpose).
| subhobroto wrote:
| It seems to be hyperfocused on system architecture diagrams.
|
| There are some other kinds of diagrams would we like to draw
| that's not system architecture diagrams, eg:
|
| - algorithms
|
| - decision trees
|
| - UML/ER Diagrams
|
| Mermaid (JS) helps draw quality diagrams quickly - more than
| system architecture diagrams.
|
| It would have been perfect if the development cycles that went
| here was used to create Mermaid templates instead.
|
| Unless this also lets us draw more than just system architecture
| diagrams.
| josegonzalez wrote:
| This would have been perfect for you maybe. I find the Diagrams
| package to be just fine as it is. A tool or library doesn't
| have to support _every_ bit of functionality in order to be
| useful.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| The focus would make sense to me if, say, it exported to
| initial terraform templates or something like that.
| jekriro7 wrote:
| I'd prefer to avoid text blob artifacts if this was being
| used at work with plenty of text blobs to babysit already
|
| IMO the end days for TF and YAML engineering are close, at
| least for new work
|
| It's all HTTP APIs. Build a web UX and store the state in a
| DB.
|
| SRE/ops people ...at work just use the methods everyone else
| does
|
| Unless the company still has hardware, cloud ops/SRE is just
| making their lives harder to be different
| kronin wrote:
| There is significant value in text blob workflows.
|
| Requiring the definition of everything that makes up your
| stack to be stored in a format that is not text adds
| complexity to the disaster recovery process, not to mention
| mutation, diffing, reviewing, approving, promoting, etc.
|
| For places where a single environment that is updated in
| place and requires little/no approval to do so, sure.
| Personally I really like textual definition of
| infrastructure and configuration, and disagree that it is
| end days for them.
| mugsie wrote:
| > It's all HTTP APIs. Build a web UX and store the state in
| a DB.
|
| Please no. Don't make running a stateful service a
| requirement for tooling people need to use when the world
| is on fire. Or needs to load 40Mb of JS to rebuild a
| deployment, and works only on Chrome 46.012.2039465.
| Ops/SRE/DevOps/SysAdmin/SysOps/etc _are_ different, and
| have optimised things to reduce the amount of dependancies.
| snejj5 wrote:
| What's the alternative you'd recommend?
| mugsie wrote:
| The explicit, declarative model, using tools that don't
| need a ton of other things deployed.
|
| Ideally the same tool can be run locally and in CI (with
| the same invocation commands) so that an Op can run tests
| locally, and even see the potential diff, before putting
| it up for review.
|
| The advantage of this approach is you can see a diff, and
| use standard tooling like git / pr reviews to approve
| changes in day to day, and when the world is on fire,
| someone can break the glass and run it locally.
|
| Never underestimate the value of peer review on a change
| to the infra - there is a reason things like ITIL exist,
| and we should learn from them.
| polote wrote:
| Why do we need a tool to draw its architecture and we don't have
| a tool which auto discover the architecture and auto updates it
| and draw it form here ?
|
| That will shrink the gap between the current architecture and the
| current diagram that almost always exists
| rurounijones wrote:
| xloudcraft.com auto-generates and updates from live account and
| gives you info like cost etc.
|
| Looks really.i.ptessive
| rurounijones wrote:
| cloudcraft.com
|
| Stupid mobile keyboards...
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I have been thinking about using this for some diagrams, but
| whats been on the back of my mind since I heard about it is how
| to combine it with Terraform, or Troposphere, and have your
| infrastructure as code also draw the diagrams automatically.
| bingo_cannon wrote:
| This looks really neat! Is it possible to have embedded diagrams.
| For example, Gitlab lets you embed a PlantUML[1] diagram in any
| Markdown or ADoc file using a proxy server. This makes it really
| easy to write and serve documentation.
|
| Personally, I'm a fan of PlantUML. Having an svg served in a
| browser that has labels linking directly to the relevant entity
| (code, resource etc) is a huge plus for new hire onboarding.
|
| 1: https://plantuml.com/
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