🇺🇸 Rails Realtime ERD: Visualize Your Rails Schema in Real Time

Source: Dev.to

Overview

Rails Realtime ERD is a Ruby on Rails gem that lets you visualize your schema ERD diagrams in real time directly inside your application. No manual image generation, intermediate exports, or leaving the application context.

Features

• ✅ Real‑time schema visualization
• ✅ Simple integration with Rails applications
• ✅ Built on a Rails Engine
• ✅ Automatic updates as your models evolve
• ✅ Integrated web interface

Perfect for:

• Understanding existing architectures
• Onboarding new developers
• Quickly exploring model relationships
• Keeping living documentation of your application’s domain

Installation

Add the gem to your Gemfile:

gem "rails-realtime-erd"

Then run:

bundle install

Usage

After installing, start your Rails server and navigate to:

/rails/erd

You’ll see the diagram automatically updated as you modify your models.

Motivation

During consulting work, training sessions, and Rails development, I often missed a dynamic way to inspect an application’s domain—something akin to the built‑in tools like:

• /rails/mailers
• /sidekiq
• internal dashboards
• integrated development tools

In other words, open a URL and start exploring immediately. That need led to the creation of Rails Realtime ERD.

Contributing

The gem is open source and available on GitHub:

https://github.com/jacksonpires/rails-realtime-erd

Contributions, feedback, issues, and suggestions are very welcome. If you work with Rails and enjoy tools that improve productivity and architectural understanding, give it a try.