[Feature request] Integrate Structurizr

[thomastardy]

Hi everyone,

I've seen the presentation by Simon Brown (@simonbrowndotje) about "Software architecture as code" at Devoxx BE where he showed off Structurizr (https://www.structurizr.com). I think this is a great way to have more up-to-date diagrams of your code.

I will integrate this in applications I generated using jhipster. But I thought it could be a good idea to integrate that in the generator itself. If all the generated apps already come with such documentation, which then can easily be updated while changing the application, I think this will result in much more documented applications.

What do you think about this?

If you think this is a good idea, I would like to take this chance and do the integration myself and contribute to jhipster.

[jdubois]

This is a non-OSS, paying product, see https://www.structurizr.com/pricing , so we can't integrate it into our project. I've already had lots of trouble with companies trying to put their for-pay product into JHipster, and clearly I don't want to go this way in the main generator. If one day we do the "plug in" system we're currently discussing, then this could be the solution -> companies could do their own proprietary plugin, that they would maintain themselves, and that would be separated from the main project.

[simonbrowndotje]

Thanks for the kind words @wibbo ... I think it's probably better if I add support for JHipster into the open source "Structurizr for Java" client library (https://github.com/structurizr/java) if needed. Since JHipster is creating Spring Boot apps though, this shouldn't be too tricky as Spring MVC is already supported. I'll take a look at creating a software architecture model for the sample app (https://github.com/jhipster/jhipster-sample-app) and let you know how I get on.

[jdubois]

@simonbrowndotje I'm not familiar with your product, of course, but it looks a bit like what we do at https://jhipster.github.io/jhipster_uml.html -> we have a DSL that could perhaps work with your product, maybe you could work something with the JHipster UML team

[simonbrowndotje]

Hi @wibbo ... here's some code that will generate a software architecture model for the Spring Boot part of the sample JHipster application -> https://github.com/structurizr/java/blob/master/structurizr-examples/src/com/structurizr/example/jhipster/JHipsterSampleApplication.java

And here are the diagrams -> https://structurizr.com/public/5651

Feel free to e-mail me with thoughts, comments, questions, etc.

[thomastardy]

Hi @simonbrowndotje Thanks a lot! I will have a look at it an integrate it in one of our applications.

[deepu105]

The diagrams look nice On 15 Nov 2015 22:08, "Simon Brown" notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi @wibbo https://github.com/wibbo ... here's some code that will generate a software architecture model for the Spring Boot part of the sample JHipster application -> https://github.com/structurizr/java/blob/master/structurizr-examples/src/com/structurizr/example/jhipster/JHipsterSampleApplication.java

And here are the diagrams -> https://structurizr.com/public/5651

Feel free to e-mail me with thoughts, comments, questions, etc.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/jhipster/generator-jhipster/issues/2345#issuecomment-156813986 .

[cbornet]

Looks really nice. Too bad it's not free...

[simonbrowndotje]

Hosting on Pivotal Web Services isn't free either @cbornet ;-) But ... the free tier is free. As is the entirety of the client library (https://github.com/structurizr/java), which is the part that creates an architecture model by extracting information from, in this case, Spring Boot apps. The open source library also includes exporters to Graphviz and websequencediagrams, plus you can build whatever visualisation you want of the model. Anyway, as I said, the free tier is free. Here are the same diagrams for the JHipster sample application hosted on a free account -> https://structurizr.com/public/5421

[jdubois]

Pivotal Web Services is based on Cloud Foundry, which is Open Source Software.

But that's not really the point, of course:

• hosting an application has got a price, and for that specific case we support multiple hosting providers, so that our users are not locked.
• it's done in sub-generators, and not in the main generator, which is the same idea as in my first comment: it's a kind of "plugin" system, but it is maintained by the JHipster team, which isn't scalable for us in the long term.

That's why I want to move that kind of thing out of the main project, so that each company can participate without adding code to the main project. In the end, my goal is that we have some kind of "marketplace", where proprietary as well as OSS software can provide their own JHipster sub-generators, and those would not be maintained by the JHipster team. If we do it well, that would be where @simonbrowndotje you could host your application. Of course, as we are all doing this on our free time, and as we all have a real job outside, this can take some time before it's available.

[simonbrowndotje]

I can see my PWS comment may have caused some confusion ... structurizr.com is hosted on PWS CF, which I'm paying for. And it's an awesome platform, BTW. Although I would like to offer a totally free architecture diagramming SaaS, that's obviously impractical. :-)

[jdubois]

No problem for me, anyway we have a plan to support this kind of need. I'll re-open this and update you if/when we have that plugin system ready.

[pascalgrimaud]

@wibbo @simonbrowndotje We have a new "module" system. Here is :

• our module marketplace
• how to make a module

It will be interesting to have a module for Structurizr

[jdubois]

Yes this is done for projects like yours! Sorry I didn't add a comment here earlier. Hope you like it, don't hesitate to send comments or ask for more features.