README

Laravel Visual Migrator is a powerful visual database schema design tool integrated directly into your Laravel application. Model your tables, fields, and relationships visually and transform them into Laravel migration files instantly.

Key Features

🎨 Visual Architecture Builder: Design your database schema using a highly interactive and intuitive diagram interface powered by Vue Flow.
🔄 Bidirectional Synchronization:
- Import: Automatically scan your database/migrations folder and visualize your existing tables.
- Export: Generate clean, PSR-compliant Laravel migration PHP files from your visual design.
🛡️ Draft & Persistence System: Added tables (Drafts) are preserved in your browser's local storage until you officially save them to migrations, preventing work loss on refresh.
� Layout Stability: Smart merging logic ensures that your custom node positions are preserved even after backend synchronization.
⚡ Real-time Change Detection: Automatically detects when migration files are modified on the server and notifies you to sync.
� Table Selection: Choose specifically which tables you want to export or sync, giving you granular control over your codebase.

Efficiency & Performance

Optimized Network Traffic: Uses debounced requests for layout saving and throttled polling for change detection.
Tab Visibility Awareness: Polling automatically pauses when the browser tab is inactive to save system resources.
Lightweight Metadata: Relationship and layout data are stored efficiently in a single JSON file within your migrations folder.

Installation

Install the package via composer:

composer require ekosuprianto96/laravel-visual-migrator

Publish and setup the package automatically:

php artisan visual-migrator:install

This command will publish assets, configuration, and offers to run the database migrations for you.

How to Access

After installation, the Visual Migrator dashboard is available at:

http://your-app.test/visual-migrator

Note

By default, the dashboard is only accessible in the local environment. You can change the URL path and middleware in the config/visual-migrator.php file.

Useful Commands

Reset Metadata

If you need to reset all visual layout data (node positions), you can use the refresh command:

php artisan visual-migrator:refresh

Cleanup Orphaned Data

If you delete migration files manually, you can clean up the orphaned visual metadata from the database:

php artisan visual-migrator:cleanup

Testing

Run the unit tests using PHPUnit:

cd packages/laravel
composer install
./vendor/bin/phpunit

Configuration

The configuration file is located at config/visual-migrator.php. You can customize the following options:

return [
    /**
     * The URL path where the visual migrator dashboard will be accessible.
     * Default: 'visual-migrator'
     */
    'path' => 'visual-migrator',

    /**
     * The middleware applied to the visual migrator routes.
     * Usually 'web' is sufficient for local development.
     */
    'middleware' => ['web'],

    /**
     * List of migration tables to be ignored by the visual migrator.
     * These tables will not be parsed or displayed in the diagram dashboard.
     * Perfect for hiding Laravel system/boilerplate tables.
     */
    'ignore_migrations' => [
        'users', 'password_reset_tokens', 'failed_jobs', 
        'personal_access_tokens', 'cache', 'jobs', 
        'job_batches', 'sessions',
    ],
];

Important

For security reasons, the dashboard is only accessible in the local environment by default.

Why Use Laravel Visual Migrator?

Speed up Prototyping: Stop writing migrations by hand. Drag, drop, and click to build your core architecture in minutes.
Visual Documentation: Your diagram is your living documentation. New team members can understand the database structure at a glance.
Reduced Human Error: Ensure foreign keys and data types are consistent across tables without worrying about syntax errors.
Non-Destructive: It works alongside your existing migrations. You can selectively sync only what you need.

Future Roadmap

Visual Seeders: Generate factory and seeder data directly from the diagram.
Export to Laravel Blueprint: Support for the popular Laravel Blueprint syntax.
Collaborative Mode: Real-time collaborative design for teams.
Reverse Engineering Support: Advanced parsing for complex raw SQL dumps.

ekosuprianto96 / laravel-visual-migrator

Maintainers

Details