lucid-dreams

A CLI to convert a Lucidchart ERD to a Prisma schema file

• Overview
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Supported fields
    • Required or mandatory fields
    • Optional fields
  • Supported Lucidchart Shapes
    • Entity Relationship (2 columns)
      • Shape Structure
  • Example

Overview

Lucidchart allows you to create an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD), which is a great way to visualize and mange your database schema. It also allows you to export your ERD as a "CSV of Shape Data" .csv file.

Prisma is an ORM for Node.js and TypeScript, and it's been an awesome developer experience for me personally.

This command line interface (CLI) will take a Lucidchart "CSV of Shape Data" file as input, and output a Prisma Schema file 😎. Before the schema.prisma file is generated, prisma format is run against the file which will:

Format the Prisma schema file, which includes validating, formatting, and persisting the schema. | Source

Much love to the Prisma team 💙

Installation

npm install lucid-dreams

Usage

npx lucid-dreams --prisma ~/path/to/lucidchart/data.csv

npx lucid-dreams -p ~/path/to/data.csv

The --prisma (or -p) flag means we will convert the Entity Relationship Diagram to a schema.prisma file.

Supported fields

Note: If you have a Lucidchart field called id the "@id @default(autoincrement())" attribute will automatically be included 😎 | More info on autoincrement()

Required or mandatory fields

By default, your field will be a mandatory field in the generated schema.prisma file. Lucidchart fields are converted to the following Prisma model field scalar types:

Lucidchart field	Prisma model field scalar types	Resources
uuid / id	String @id @default(uuid())	uuid()
int	Int	autoIncrement()
varchar(100)	String @db.VarChar(100)	varChar(x)
char(245)	String @db.Char(245)	char(x)
datetime	DateTime
date	DateTime
time	DateTime
timestamp	DateTime
bool	Boolean
boolean	Boolean

Optional fields

Optional Lucidchart fields can be represented with the ? or (null) modifiers. If either of those modifiers exist in the Lucidchart field, the field will be modified with the ? Prisma Type modifier making it optional:

Lucidchart field	Prisma model field scalar types
int? / int(null)	Int?
varchar(100)? / varchar(100)(null)	String? @db.VarChar(100)
char(245)? / char(245)(null)	String? @db.Char(245)
datetime? / datetime(null)	DateTime?
date? / date(null)	DateTime?
time? / time(null)	DateTime?
timestamp? / timestamp(null)	DateTime?
bool? / bool(null)	Boolean?
boolean? / boolean(null)	Boolean?

Supported Lucidchart Shapes

Entity Relationship (2 columns)

Create a 2 column Shape in your Lucidchart ERD.

Shape Structure

The label in the header section of the Lucidchart Shape will be the table name, or the name of the resulting Prisma model. The first column should be the database column name (prisma field), and the second column should be it's field.

Example

Here is an example Lucidchart Entity Relationship Diagram with a two column structure. The first column is the database column name (prisma field), and the second column is the field. The field column is case insensitive, and can contain the modifiers ? or (null) to make it optional. The image below includes various examples of fields using both ? and (null) modifiers:

1. This chart would then be exported from Lucidchart like this: File > Export > CSV of Shape Data. Let's say we saved it as /Downloads/data.csv for example.

2. We can now run the lucid-dreams CLI with the -p flag and specify the path to the file we just exported:

   npx lucid-dreams -p /Downloads/data.csv

3. The lucid-dreams CLI will take the models from Lucidchart and convert them to Prisma models. The generated schema.prisma file will contain the following:

   datasource db {
     url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
     provider = "postgresql"
   }
   
   generator client {
     provider = "prisma-client-js"
   }
   
   model Challenge {
     id          String   @id @default(uuid())
     time        DateTime
     location    String   @db.VarChar(50)
     accepted    Boolean?
     notes       String
     description String
     startTime   DateTime
     endDate     DateTime
     createdDate DateTime
   }
   
   model Rank {
     id            String       @id @default(uuid())
     position      Int
     description   String?      @db.VarChar(100)
     notes         String?      @db.Char(100)
     Leaderboard   Leaderboard? @relation(fields: [leaderboardId], references: [id])
     leaderboardId Int?
   }
   
   model Member {
     id        Int     @id @default(autoincrement())
     firstName String  @db.VarChar(100)
     lastName  String? @db.Char(245)
     nickname  String? @db.VarChar(50)
     age       Int?
     code      Int?
   }
   
   model Group {
     id           Int       @id @default(autoincrement())
     name         String
     description  String
     birthday     DateTime?
     halfBirthday DateTime?
     accepted     Boolean?
   }
   
   model Leaderboard {
     id    Int    @id @default(autoincrement())
     ranks Rank[]
   }