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

#database #rails #ruby #showdev

Anyone who works with Ruby on Rails applications knows that, as a project grows, quickly understanding the relationships between models can become increasingly difficult.

Even when using traditional ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) generation tools, there is usually some friction in the workflow: generating files, manually updating diagrams, or relying on external processes.

With that in mind, I created the Rails Realtime ERD gem.

What is Rails Realtime ERD?

rails-realtime-erd is a Ruby on Rails gem that allows you to visualize your schema ERD diagrams in real time directly inside your application.

The idea is simple:

Install the gem
Add it to your project
Open a route
See your diagram automatically updated

No manual image generation. No intermediate exports. No leaving your application context.

Key Features

✅ Real-time schema visualization
✅ Simple integration with Rails applications
✅ Built on 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

Now simply access:

/rails/erd

in your project to visualize your diagram.

Why create this gem?

During consulting work, training sessions, and Rails application development, I often felt the lack of a more dynamic experience for inspecting an application's domain.

I wanted something closer to the experience we already have with: