rowhit/state_machines-graphviz

Graphviz module for state machines

StateMachines::Graphviz

This adds support for generating di-graphs based on the events, states, and transitions defined for a state machine using GraphViz.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'state_machines-graphviz' , group: :development

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install state_machines-graphviz

Usage

Examples

To generate a graph for a specific file / class:

rake state_machines:draw FILE=vehicle.rb CLASS=Vehicle

From a Rails app directory:

rake state_machines:draw CLASS=Vehicle

To save files to a specific path:

rake state_machines:draw FILE=vehicle.rb CLASS=Vehicle TARGET=files

To customize the image format / orientation:

rake state_machines:draw FILE=vehicle.rb CLASS=Vehicle FORMAT=jpg ORIENTATION=landscape

See http://rdoc.info/github/glejeune/Ruby-Graphviz/GraphViz/Constants for the list of supported image formats. If resolution is an issue, the svg format may offer better results.

To generate multiple state machine graphs:

rake state_machines:draw FILE=vehicle.rb,car.rb CLASS=Vehicle,Car

To use human state / event names:

rake state_machines:draw FILE=vehicle.rb CLASS=Vehicle HUMAN_NAMES=true

Note that this will generate a different file for every state machine defined in the class. The generated files will use an output filename of the format #{class_name}_#{machine_name}.#{format}.

For examples of actual images generated using this task, see those under the examples folder.

Interactive graphs

Jean Bovet's Visual Automata Simulator is a great tool for "simulating, visualizing and transforming finite state automata and Turing Machines". It can help in the creation of states and events for your models. It is cross-platform, written in Java.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/state-machines/state_machines-graphviz/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request